Dame Hermione Lee

Dame Hermione Lee, DBE, FBA, FRSL (born 29 February 1948, Winchester) is President of Wolfson College, Oxford, and was lately Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of New College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature.

Born in Winchester, Hampshire, Lee grew up in London, where her father was a GP. She was educated at the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, City of London School for Girls, and Queen's College, London. She took a first-class degree in English Literature at St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1968 and an MPhil at St Cross College, Oxford, in 1970.

She has taught at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, at the University of Liverpool (where she was given an Honorary DLitt in 2002) and at the University of York, from 1977 to 1998, where she had a personal Chair in the Department of English and Related Literature, and where she received an Honorary DLitt in 2007. Since 1998, she has been the Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature and the first woman professorial Fellow of New College, Oxford. She succeeded Sir Gareth Roberts as the sixth President of Wolfson College, Oxford, in 2008, serving until the end of academic year 2016–17. She is a lifetime honorary fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford.