Elsie Duncan-Jones

Elsie Elizabeth Duncan-Jones (née Phare; 2 July 1908 – 7 April 2003) was a British literary scholar, translator, and playwright, and authority on the poet Andrew Marvell.

Elsie Duncan-Jones
Born
Elsie Elizabeth Phare

2 July 1908
Devon
Died7 April 2003
NationalityBritish
Other namesE. E. Phare
OccupationLiterary scholar
Spouse(s)Austin Duncan-Jones
ChildrenRichard Duncan-Jones
Katherine Duncan-Jones

Early life and education

Elsie Elizabeth Phare was born in Chelston, Devon, in 1908, the daughter of Henry Phare and Hilda Annie Bull Phare.[1] Her father was a stationer and radio engineer. She received a scholarship to attend Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied with literary scholar I.A. Richards, and was president of the college's undergraduate literary society.[2] In 1929, she won the college's Chancellor's Medal for English verse.[3]

Career

In 1931, Phare became assistant lecturer in English at the University of Southampton. While there, she wrote a play, Fidelia's Ghost, and published her first book of literary criticism, on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins.[4] She had to resign her post when she married a fellow faculty member in 1933.[2]

Duncan-Jones moved with her husband when he became a professor at the University of Birmingham in 1936. Despite nepotism rules, she was allowed a lectureship there during World War II. In 1935 and 1938, she won the Seatonian Prize.[5][6] She became known for her expertise on the poet Andrew Marvell.[7] In 1975 she gave the annual Warton Lecture on English Poetry at the British Academy.[8] She retired from teaching in 1976, and lived in Cambridge.[2]

In 1937 Duncan-Jones's "heroic and workmanlike"[9] translation of Molière's The Misanthrope was produced in London, starring Lydia Lopokova and Francis James.[10]

Personal life

Elsie Phare married the philosopher Austin Duncan-Jones in 1933. They had three children, including a son who died young;[3] their other children were the historian of the ancient world Richard Duncan-Jones, and the Shakespeare scholar Katherine Duncan-Jones.[11] Elsie Duncan-Jones was widowed in 1967, and she died in Cambridge in 2003, aged 94 years.[12][13] British food writer Bee Wilson and classicist Emily Wilson are her granddaughters.[14]

Selected works
  • The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins; a survey and commentary (1933)[4]
  • 'Ash Wednesday', in Balachandra Rajan, ed., T.S. Eliot, a study of his writings by several hands (1947)
  • 'Benlowes's Borrowings from George Herbert' The Review of English Studies (1955)[15]
  • 'Benlowes, Marvell, and the Divine Casimire: A Note' Huntington Review Quarterly (1957)[16]
  • The poems and letters of Andrew Marvell (1971)[17]
  • A great master of words : some aspects of Marvell's poems of praise and blame (1975), her Warton Lecture at the British Academy, published the following year in Proceedings of the British Academy[18]
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References
  1. "Elsie Duncan-Jones". The Telegraph. 20 April 2003. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  2. Kelliher, W. H. (2007). "Jones, Elsie Elizabeth Duncan- [née Elsie Elizabeth Phare] (1908–2003), literary scholar". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/89894. Retrieved 13 March 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  3. "Literary scholar knew her Hopkins". Times Colonist. 22 April 2003. p. 31. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. Phare, Elsie Elizabeth (26 May 2016). The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-316-61197-5.
  5. "Appointments at Cambridge". The Guardian. 23 October 1935. p. 12. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. "Cambridge, October 24". The Guardian. 25 October 1938. p. 12. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. Dzelzainis, Martin; Holberton, Edward (28 March 2019). The Oxford Handbook of Andrew Marvell. Oxford University Press. pp. 167, 322. ISBN 978-0-19-105599-7.
  8. "Warton Lectures on English Poetry". The British Academy. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  9. H, H. (14 February 1937). "Arts: Cambridge". The Observer. p. 15. Retrieved 13 March 2020 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. "THE MISANTHROPE' OPENS; London Premiere Is Translation by Elsie Duncan-Jones". The New York Times. 24 February 1937. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  11. "Person Page: Elsie Elizabeth Phare". The Peerage. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  12. "Elsie Duncan-Jones". The Independent. 24 April 2003. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  13. "Elsie Duncan Jones". The Times. 25 April 2003. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  14. Clapp, Susannah (21 September 2019). "The LRB is 40. We never thought it would last this long". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  15. Duncan-Jones, Elsie (1955). "Benlowes's Borrowings from George Herbert". The Review of English Studies. 6 (22): 179–180. doi:10.1093/res/VI.21.179. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 510553.
  16. Duncan-Jones, Elsie (1957). "Benlowes, Marvell, and the Divine Casimire: A Note". Huntington Library Quarterly. 20 (2): 183–184. doi:10.2307/3816370. ISSN 0018-7895. JSTOR 3816370.
  17. "The poems and letters of Andrew Marvell / Andrew Marvell Vol I, Poems". Hull History Centre Catalogue. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  18. Duncan-Jones, Elsie (15 October 1975). "Marvell: A Great Master of Words" Warton Lecture on English Poetry.
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