Dame Frances Yates

Frances Amelia Yates
Frances Yates in graduation robes, 1924
Born	(1899-11-28)28 November 1899 Southsea, Hampshire, England, UK
Died	29 September 1981(1981-09-29) (aged 81) Surbiton, Surrey, England, UK
Occupation	historian, writer
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University College London, Warburg Institute
Subject	History of Western esotericism

Dame Frances Amelia Yates, DBE, FBA (28 November 1899 – 29 September 1981) was an English historian who focused on the study of the Renaissance. In an academic capacity, she taught at the Warburg Institute of the University of London for many years, and also wrote a number of books on the subject of esoteric history.

Yates was born to a middle-class family in Portsmouth, and was largely self-educated, before attaining a BA and MA in French at University College, London. She began to publish her research in scholarly journals and academic books, focusing on 16th century theatre and the life of John Florio. In 1941, she was employed by the Warburg Institute, and began to work on what she termed "Warburgian history", emphasising a pan-European and inter-disciplinary approach to historiography.

In 1964 she published Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, an examination of Bruno, which came to be seen as her most significant publication. In this book, she emphasised the role of Hermeticism in Bruno's works, and the role that magic and mysticism played in Renaissance thinking. She wrote extensively on the occult or Neoplatonic philosophies of the Renaissance. Her books Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), The Art of Memory (1966), and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972) are major works. She "dealt with traditions whose remoteness she could not eliminate, even while she made them more understandable."

Frances Amelia Yates was born on 28 November 1899 in the southern English coastal town of Portsmouth. She was the fourth child of middle-class parents, James Alfred and Hannah Malpas Yates, and had two sisters, Ruby and Hannah, and a brother, Jimmy. James was the son of a Royal Navy gunner, and had become a naval apprentice in the dockyards during his teenage years, working his way up to a senior position in which he oversaw the construction of dreadnoughts. He had taught himself to read and was a keen reader, ensuring that his children had access to plenty of books. James was a devout Anglican Christian, influenced by the Oxford Movement and sympathetic to the Catholic Church. Frances was christened in February 1900 at St. Anne's Church in the dockyard, although from an early age had doubts about Christianity and the literal accuracy of the Bible.