Kathleen Freeman (classicist) explained

Kathleen Freeman
Birth Date:22 June 1897
Birth Place:Yardley, Birmingham, England
Death Place:St Mellons, Wales
Alma Mater:Cardiff University (as University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire)
Discipline:Ancient Greek philosophy
Workplaces:Cardiff University (as University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire), Philosophical Society of England

Kathleen Freeman (22 June 1897 – 21 February 1959) was a British classical scholar and author of detective novels. Her detective fiction was published under the pseudonym Mary Fitt. Freeman was a lecturer in Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff, between 1919 and 1946.[1]

Early life and education

Kathleen Freeman was born in Yardley, Birmingham, and was the daughter of a commercial traveller, Charles H. Freeman, and Catharine Freeman, née Mawdesley. By the 1911 census, the family had moved to an eight-room house at 86 Conway Road, Cardiff.:315 Freeman's mother died in 1919, and her father died in 1932.:315 Freeman attended Canton High School on Market Road in Cardiff, which opened in 1907. Boys and girls were both educated in the school but separately in different subjects: Canton High School offered Latin but not to girls, and Freeman's schooling did not include Greek or Latin.

In a field dominated by men, she was an unlikely candidate to become a classicist of note.:315 No details have been found about when or with whom she started to learn ancient Greek.:316 Freeman knew Latin, French, German, Italian, and ancient and modern Greek. Except for French, which was taught at Canton High School, it remains unclear how she learnt these languages.:316

Freeman won a scholarship to study at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff, which began to accept male and female students in 1893.:317 [2] She began her degree in 1915 and studied with Professor Gilbert Norwood.[3]

Academic career

Following her graduation in 1918 when she was awarded a BA, Freeman remained at University College and was appointed Lecturer in Greek in 1919. She went on to earn an MA in 1922 and a DLitt in 1940.[4] A 1922 picture of the faculty at University College shows 41 men and 10 women. Only one of these women, Ida Beata Saxby, had a doctorate (University of London, 1918).:318[5]

Freeman is best known for her works The Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Companion to Diels, Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker (1946), and Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1947/48), a translation of and handbook to the fragments of Pre-Socratic philosophers collected by Diels.[6] From early in her career, Freeman worked to bring Greek texts to the general public through her work in translating texts and presenting her ideas to general audiences.:333 Freeman featured on BBC radio in 1926 presenting a series on 'Writers of Greece', including Greek authors such as Aristophanes, Thucydides and Empedocles.[7] [8] [9]

During the Second World War Freeman delivered lectures on Greece for the Ministry of Information and in the National Scheme of Education for HM Forces in South Wales and Monmouthshire.[10] :323 She further contributed to the war effort with her selections of translations from Greek authors which featured in The Western Mail, a Cardiff-based newspaper. These were later published as the book, It Has All Happened Before: What the Greeks Thought of their Nazis (1941).[11] Her publications Voices of Freedom (1943), What They Said at the Time: A Survey of the Causes of the Second World War (1945) and her work with the Philosophical Society of England, where she acted as Supervisor of Studies from 1948 to 1952 before becoming the Chairman in 1952, are further testimony to her desire to make Greek ideas accessible through translation. Freeman resigned from the university in 1946 in order to pursue her research and writing.[12]

Fiction-writing career

Freeman enjoyed success as a writer of fiction and wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Fitt (1936–60), Stuart Mary Wick (1948; 1950), Clare St. Donat (1950) and Caroline Cory (1956).[13] [14] [15]

In 1926, in addition to her study The Work and Life of Solon, Freeman published a collection of short stories The Intruder and Other Stories, and her first novel Martin Hanner. A Comedy.[16] In 1936 she began publishing crime fiction under the pseudonym Mary Fitt, writing 27 books and a number of short stories. In 1950 she became a member of the Detection Club.[17] Her books were critically acclaimed at the time, although since her death many have been out of print.[18] [19] She also wrote twelve children's stories and T'other Miss Austen (1956), a study of Jane Austen.

In recent years Freeman's work has been re-assessed, especially in the light of Welsh women and modernism.[20] [Acknowledgements] Her short stories have also been described as antecedents of the Kate North's queer stories, and, as of 2019, republication of some of her short stories was planned. [21] [p. 442]

Personal life

From some time in the 1930s until her death, she lived with her girlfriend, Dr. Liliane Marie Catherine Clopet (1901–1987), a GP and author, at Lark's Rise, a house on Druidstone Road in St Mellons, now a district of Cardiff.[22]

Freeman dedicated all her novels (written as Freeman, rather than Fitt) to Clopet from This Love (1929) onwards. The presentation copy of The Work and Life of Solon has survived, which Freeman dedicated to Clopet, dated to 14 July 1926.[23] Freeman's inscription includes a slight misspelling of Clopet's name, which has been thought by antiquarian bookseller Peter Harrington,[24] to indicate that Freeman and Clopet were in the early stages of their relationship. Freeman died in 1959 in St. Mellons at the age of 61. Clopet considerably outlived Freeman, dying in 1987 in Newport.

Bibliography

Academic publications

Selected fictional publications

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. For a brief note on Liliane Clopet, her career and her writings see Biography and bibliography by M. Eleanor Irwin and How to Conceal a Female Scholar; or, the Invisible Classicist of Cardiff by Edith Hall.
  2. Web site: Classics & Class » Kathleen Freeman's Ancillary Classicism. . 3 June 2014 . 9 April 2022 . en-US.
  3. Web site: 13 December 2016. Inspirational People: 3. Kathleen Freeman – Classicist and Fiction Writer. 22 February 2022. Cardiff University. en-US.
  4. Irwin, M. E. (2004) 'Freeman, Kathleen (1897–1959)', in Todd, R. B ed. The Dictionary of British Classicists. Volume I, A-F. p. 343.
  5. Some conditions affecting the growth and permanence of desires.. 1918. English. Ida Beata. Saxby. 1016050303.
  6. Dain . Alphonse . 1951 . Kathleen Freeman, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers. A Companion to Diels Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 1946 ; Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, A complete translation of the Fragments ..., 1948 . Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé . 1 . 2 . 111–112.
  7. Web site: Issue 162. genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. 27 June 2018.
  8. "Broadcasting." Times, 29 November 1926, 21. The Times Digital Archive (accessed 23 March 2022). External Link
  9. "Programmes." Times, 19 November 1928, 8. The Times Digital Archive (accessed 23 March 2022). External Link
  10. Book: Freeman, Kathleen . Greek City-States . 27 October 2016 . Hauraki Publishing . 978-1-78720-196-5 . en.
  11. News: William . Charles . 25 October 1941 . Ancient Tyrants . 531 . . 2073 . London, England .
  12. Irwin, M. E. (2004) 'Freeman, Kathleen (1897–1959)', in Todd, R. B ed. The Dictionary of British Classicists. Volume I, A-F. pp. 343–4.
  13. Irwin, M. E. (2004) 'Freeman, Kathleen (1897–1959)', in Todd, R. B ed. The Dictionary of British Classicists. Volume I, A-F. p. 344.
  14. For a comprehensive list of Freeman's writings see Biography and bibliography by M. Eleanor Irwin.
  15. Book: Carty . A Dictionary of Literary Pseudonyms in the English Language . 2014 . 978-1-135-95578-6 . New York . 448 . 931534831.
  16. News: 17 October 1926. A SEDATE TRIANGLE; MARTIN HANNER. A Comedy. By Kathleen Freeman, 328 pp., New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. $2.50.. en-US. The New York Times. 22 February 2022. 0362-4331.
  17. Web site: gadetection / Detection Club, The. 22 February 2022. gadetection.pbworks.com.
  18. Turner. N.. 2019. Miss Fitt's Misfits: Mary Fitt and the Case of the Vanished Crime Writer.. Clues: A Journal of Detection. 37. 2. 105–114. 0742-4248.
  19. Web site: Mary Fitt . 23 March 2022 . www.litencyc.com . en.
  20. Book: Bohata . Kirsti . Queer Square Mile . Morgan . Mihangel . Osborne . Huw . 21 October 2021 . Parthian Books . 978-1-913640-25-5 . en.
  21. Book: The Cambridge history of Welsh literature . 2019 . Geraint Evans, Helen Fulton . 978-1-316-22720-6 . Cambridge, United Kingdom . 1099309674.
  22. Web site: Kathleen Freeman . 15 August 2020 . www.utsc.utoronto.ca.
  23. Web site: The Work and Life of Solon. With a Translation of his Poems. by FREEMAN, Kathleen.: (1926) Signed by Author(s) Peter Harrington. ABA/ ILAB.. 15 August 2020. www.abebooks.co.uk. en-GB.
  24. Web site: Peter Harrington ABA: The Antiquarian Bookseller Association . 17 May 2022 . dev.aba.org.uk.
  25. Walker. E. M.. 1927. The Work and Life of Solon - The Work and Life of Solon. With a translation of his Poems. By Kathleen Freeman, M.A., Lecturer in Greek, University of South Wales, Monmouthshire. Pp. 236. Cardiff: The University of Wales Press Board; London: Humphrey Milford, 1926. Cloth, 10s. net.. The Classical Review. en. 41. 1. 17–19. 10.1017/S0009840X00031437. 246880212 . 1464-3561.
  26. 1948 . Pre-Socratic Philosophers. A companion to Diels's Fragmente der Vorsokratiker . By Kathleen Freeman. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946, pp. xiii+486. 25 s . . Greece and Rome . en . 17 . 51 . 132–133 . 10.1017/S0017383500010196 . 0017-3835.
  27. Morrow . Glenn R. . 1949 . Review of Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker . The Classical Weekly . 43 . 2 . 28–29 . 10.2307/4342608 . 4342608 . 1940-641X.
  28. K. . H. . Freeman . Kathleen . 27 October 1949 . Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers. A Complete Translation of the Fragments in Diels' Fragmente der Vorsokratiker . The Journal of Philosophy . 46 . 22 . 717 . 10.2307/2020243 . 2020243 . 0022-362X.
  29. News: Squire . John . 9 February 1952 . Greek Views on Five Fundamental Matters. God, Man and State. Greek concepts by Kathleen Freeman . 206 . The Illustrated London News . 23 March 2022.
  30. Book: Women classical scholars : unsealing the fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly. Wyles, Rosie and Hall, Edith. 2016. 978-0191038297. First. Oxford, United Kingdom. 964291395.

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