Women Classical Scholars ─ Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly

Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly is the first written history of the pioneering women born between the Renaissance and 1913 who played significant roles in the history of classical scholarship. Facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles from patriarchal social systems and educational institutions--from learning Latin and Greek as a marginalized minority, to being excluded from institutional support, denigrated for being lightweight or over-ambitious, and working in the shadows of husbands, fathers, and brothers--they nevertheless continued to teach, edit, translate, analyse, and elucidate the texts left to us by the ancient Greeks and Romans.

In this volume, 20 essays by international leaders in the field chronicle the lives of women from around the globe who have shaped the discipline over more than 500 years. Arranged in broadly chronological order from the Italian, Iberian, and Portuguese Renaissance through to the Stalinist Soviet Union and occupied France, they synthesize illuminating overviews of the evolution of classical scholarship with incisive case-studies into often overlooked key figures: some, like Madame Anne Dacier, were already famous in their home countries but have been neglected in previous, male-centered accounts, while others have been almost completely lost to the mainstream cultural memory. This book identifies and celebrates them--their frustrations, achievements, and lasting records; in so doing it provides the classical scholars of today, regardless of gender, with the female intellectual ancestors they did not know they had.

Rosie Wyles has been a Lecturer in Classical History and Literature at the University of Kent since 2014, having previously held posts at the University of Oxford, the National University of Ireland Maynooth, the University of Nottingham, and King's College London. Her research interests include Greek and Roman performance arts, costume, reception studies within antiquity and beyond, and gender. Her monograph Costume in Greek Tragedy was published in 2011; she has also published chapters on ancient performance and its reception in several collected volumes and her study of Madame Dacier's translations of Aristophanes will be included in the forthcoming Brill's Companion to the Reception of Aristophanes.

After holding posts at universities including Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, Edith Hall took up a chair in Classics at King's College London in 2012. She has published more than twenty books on diverse aspects of ancient Greek and Roman literature and its reception and is a regular broadcaster on BBC Radio and consultant to professional theatre companies, including the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Her most recent book, Introducing the Ancient Greeks, was published by Bodley Head in 2015, in which year she was also awarded the 2015 Erasmus Prize of the European Academy for her contribution to international research.

This book represents the editors' second collaboration, having previously co-edited the volume New Directions in Ancient Pantomime for Oxford University Press in 2008. The book was met with critical acclaim on publication and one essay was selected as Best Article for 2008 by the Women's Classical Caucus.