Reminiscences of a Student's Life by Jane Ellen Harrison


 Jane Ellen Harrison was the first female career academic in England and perhaps in the English-speaking world. She pioneered a then new approach to the classics which made the findings of archeologists central. She was among the first to notice that Greek vases drew on the same mythological sources as Homer did in The Odyssey. She was one of the inspirations for Virginia Woolf's essay, "A Room of One's Own." In addition to these achievements, her reminiscences reveal her to be a lively writer who is able to convey in charming prose what it was to be a curious and intelligent girl and woman in the Victorian era. And she's brimming with viewpoints that make us wish we could have known her.

Bookish sorts, for example, may substitute other stimulants for tobacco, but will agree with her when she writes " . . . with a constant supply of books and a small dole for tobacco, I could cheerfully face the Workhouse."

Likewise, except for the conclusion, this educational program sounds ideal:

Let children early speak at least three foreign languages, let them browse freely in a good library, see all they can of the first-rate in nature, art, and literature—above all, give them a chance of knowing what science and scientific method means, and then leave them to sink or swim. Above all things, do not cultivate a taste in them for literature.

That final suggestion notwithstanding, Harrison herself did have "a taste" for literature, and it is no surprise that Virginia and Leonard Woolf, both devotees of literature, published her work at their Hogarth Press. That press is responsible for the dissemination of a lot of good books. This, certainly, is one of them.




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