Dorothy Whitelock

Dorothy Whitelock, FSA, FRHistS, FBA (11 November 1901 – 14 August 1982) was an English historian. From 1957 to 1969, she was the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge. Her best-known work is English Historical Documents, vol. I: c. 500-1042, which she edited. It is a compilation of translated sources, with introductions.

Her other works include The Beginnings of English Society (1952), After Bede (1960), The Audience of Beowulf (1951), and Genuine Asser (1967), in which she argued against V.H. Galbraith's assertion that Asser's Life of King Alfred was a forgery by Leofric.

Whitelock was born in Leeds to Edward Whitelock and his second wife Emmeline Dawson. Edward died in 1903 but despite financial struggles, Dorothy Whitelock was able to attend the Leeds Girls' High School. Whitelock was a promising student at school and it came as no surprise when in 1921 she went up to Newnham College, Cambridge at the age of 20, where she studied for Section B of the English Tripos under Hector Munro Chadwick. She gained a First in Part I and a Second in Part II. Building on these successes, she went on to postgraduate work, as Marion Kennedy Student at Newnham (1924–26), Cambridge University Scandinavian Student at Uppsala (1927–29), and the first woman to receive the Allen Scholarship at Cambridge (1929–30) These labours led to her first book, her 1930 translation and commentary on thirty nine Anglo-Saxon wills. In the same year, she became a lecturer in English language at St Hilda's College, Oxford (tutor in 1935, full fellow 1937, vice principal 1951). In 1940, she was elected a Leverhulme Fellow and in 1946 became a University Lecturer in Old English at Oxford. In 1957, she returned to Cambridge, and Newnham, as the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon.

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