Kathleen Freeman | |
---|---|
Born | 22 June 1897 Yardley, Birmingham, England |
Died | 21 February 1959 61) St Mellons, Wales | (aged
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Cardiff University (as University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Ancient Greek philosophy |
Institutions | 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]
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. [2] :315 [3] Freeman's mother died in 1919,and her father died in 1932. [2] :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. [2]
In a field dominated by men,she was an unlikely candidate to become a classicist of note. [2] :315 No details have been found about when or with whom she started to learn ancient Greek. [2] :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. [2] :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. [2] :317 [4] She began her degree in 1915 and studied with Professor Gilbert Norwood. [3]
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. [5] 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). [2] :318 [6]
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. [7] [4]
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. [2] :333 Freeman featured on BBC radio in 1926 presenting a series on 'Writers of Greece',including Greek authors such as Aristophanes,Thucydides and Empedocles. [8] [9] [10]
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. [11] [2] :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). [12] 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. [13]
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). [14] [15] [16]
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. [17] 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. [18] Her books were critically acclaimed at the time,although since her death many have been out of print. [19] [20] 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. [21] [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. [22] [p. 442]
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. [23] [1]
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. [24] Freeman's inscription includes a slight misspelling of Clopet's name,which has been thought by antiquarian bookseller Peter Harrington, [25] to indicate that Freeman and Clopet were in the early stages of their relationship. [24] Freeman died in 1959 in St. Mellons at the age of 61. Clopet considerably outlived Freeman,dying in 1987 in Newport. [23]
Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, Anaxagoras came to Athens. In later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus.
Fire is one of the four classical elements along with earth, water and air in ancient Greek philosophy and science. Fire is considered to be both hot and dry and, according to Plato, is associated with the tetrahedron.
Democritus was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. Democritus wrote extensively on a wide variety of topics.
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Heraclitus was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on ancient and modern Western philosophy, including through the works of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Heidegger.
Parmenides of Elea was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea in Magna Graecia.
Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as Early Greek Philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, the inquiries of these early philosophers spanned the workings of the natural world as well as human society, ethics, and religion. They sought explanations based on natural law. Their work and writing has been almost entirely lost. Knowledge of their views comes from testimonia, i.e. later authors' discussions of the work of pre-Socratics. Philosophy found fertile ground in the ancient Greek world because of the close ties with neighboring civilizations and the rise of autonomous civil entities, poleis.
Solon was an archaic Athenian statesman, lawmaker, political philosopher, and poet. He is one of the Seven Sages of Greece and credited with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy. Solon's efforts to legislate against political, economic and moral decline resulted in his constitutional reform overturning most of Draco's laws.
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Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC. Philosophy was used to make sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric and aesthetics. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and later evolved into Roman philosophy.
Diogenes of Apollonia was an ancient Greek philosopher, and was a native of the Milesian colony Apollonia in Thrace. He lived for some time in Athens. He believed air to be the one source of all being from which all other substances were derived, and, as a primal force, to be both divine and intelligent. He also wrote a description of the organization of blood vessels in the human body. His ideas were parodied by the dramatist Aristophanes, and may have influenced the Orphic philosophical commentary preserved in the Derveni papyrus. His philosophical work has not survived in a complete form, and his doctrines are known chiefly from lengthy quotations of his work by Simplicius, as well as a few summaries in the works of Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Aetius.
Critias was an ancient Athenian poet, philosopher and political leader. He is known today for being a student of Socrates, a writer of some regard, and for becoming the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, who ruled Athens for several months after the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War in 404/403.
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Hermann Alexander Diels was a German classical scholar, who was influential in the area of early Greek philosophy and is known for his standard work Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. Diels helped to import the term Presocratic into classical scholarship and developed the Diels–Kranz numbering system for ancient Greek Pre-Socratic texts.
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Diels–Kranz (DK) numbering is the standard system for referencing the works of the ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosophers, based on the collection of quotations from and reports of their work, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, by Hermann Alexander Diels. The Fragmente was first published in 1903, was later revised and expanded three times by Diels, and was finally revised in a fifth edition (1934–7) by Walther Kranz and again in a sixth edition (1952). In Diels–Kranz, each passage, or item, is assigned a number which is used to uniquely identify the ancient personality with which it is concerned, and the type of item given. Diels–Kranz is used in academia to cite pre-Socratic philosophers, and the system also encompasses Sophists and pre-Homeric poets such as Orpheus.
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