Mary Lascelles

Mary Madge Lascelles FBA (7 February 1900 – 10 December 1995) was a British literary scholar, specialising in Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, and Walter Scott.^[1] She was vice-principal of Somerville College, Oxford, from 1947 to 1960, and a university lecturer then reader in English literature 1960 from to 1967 at the University of Oxford.^[2][3]

Lascelles was born on 7 February 1900 on Grenada, then a British colony, to Madeline Lascelles (née Barton) and William Horace Lascelles.^[1][2] Her paternal grandfather was Henry Lascelles, 4th Earl of Harewood.^[4] When she was three, her family moved back to England, where they lived successively in Monmouth, Suffolk, and then Norfolk.^[1] She learnt to read only at the age of eight, having previously been read to by her parents.^[1] Her early education was by governess, before attending Sherborne School for Girls, a private boarding school, from the age of 15.^[1][2]

In 1919 Lascelles matriculated into Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, then an all-girls college of the University of Oxford, to study English.^[1][3] Her tutor was Janet Spens and she also attended lectures by Walter Raleigh.^[1] She graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1922; women had been allowed to graduate with degrees from Oxford only since 1920.^[1] From 1922 she undertook postgraduate studies under the supervision of George Stuart Gordon.^[1]

In 1923 she also held a research studentship at Westfield College,^[2] during which she "had access to an unpublished manuscript of a little-known Scottish version of the Alexander story, Sir Gilbert Haye's Buik of King Alexander the Conqueror" which was held at the British Museum.^[1] She completed her Bachelor of Letters (BLitt) degree in 1926.^[1] Her thesis was later published as, "Alexander and the Earthly Paradise in Mediaeval English Writings" in Medium Ævum.^[1][5]

After leaving Oxford, Lascelles was briefly a teacher at St Leonards School, a private school in St Andrews, Scotland.^[1] She then moved to Royal Holloway College, London, where she had been appointed assistant lecturer in 1936.^[1][2] There, she was required to give 13 lectures a week during the following two years.^[1] One of the lecture courses was on Jane Austen.^[1]

In 1931, Lascelles moved to Somerville College, Oxford, where she had been appointed a tutor in English Language and Literature.^[2] The following year, in 1932, she was elected a fellow of Somerville College.^[1][3] Her early teaching requirements were focused on "literature from the Middle Ages to 1830".^[1] During the Second World War, she continued teaching at Oxford; this included teaching English at Somerville and "lecturing to naval cadets in the men's college".^[1] She also acted as secretary to the Home Guard unit based near her parents' home in Norfolk during the long vacations (summer holidays).^[1] From 1947 to 1960, she also served as vice-principal of Somerville College under Dame Janet Vaughan.^[1][3] In 1960, she was appointed a university lecturer in English literature, and thereby had to stop tutoring, although she retained her fellowship as a professorial fellow.^[1][2] From 1966 to 1967, she was Reader in English Literature.^[2][3] In 1967, with her eyesight fading, she retired from full-time academia and was appointed an honorary fellow of Somerville College.^[1][2]

Lascelles continued her research after leaving full-time academia. She would go on to publish three more books.^[1][2] She died on 10 December 1995 in Cromer, Norfolk, England; she was aged 95.^[3] She left many books to Somerville College Library.^[6]

Lascelles was awarded the 1940 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize by the British Academy for her book, Jane Austen and Her Art (1939).^[7] In 1962, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.^[2] In 1982, she was once more awarded the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize, this time for her book, The Story-Teller Retrieves the Past (1980).^[7]

• Lascelles, Mary (1939). Jane Austen and Her Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.^[8] 1995 reprint
• Lascelles, Mary (1953). Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. London: Athlone Press.^[9]
• Lascelles, Mary (1968). "Scott and the Art of Revision". In Mack, Maynard; Gregor, Ian (eds.). Imagined Worlds: essays on some English novels and novelists in honour of John Butt. London: Methuen. pp. 139–56.
• Lascelles, Mary, ed. (1971). The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol 9: A Journey to the Western Island of Scotland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300012514.
• Lascelles, Mary (1973). Notions and Facts: Collected Criticism and Research. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198120223.
• Lascelles, Mary (1980). The Story-Teller Retrieves the Past: Historical Fiction and Fictitious History in the Art of Scott, Stevenson, Kipling, and Some Others. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198128021.

Poetry

• Lascelles, Mary (1971). The Adversaries and Other Poems. Cambridge: Rampant Lions Press.

• Portraits of Mary Madge Lascelles at the National Portrait Gallery, London