Edith Hamilton
| Edith Hamilton | |
|---|---|
Hamilton c. 1897
|
|
| Born |
August 12, 1867 Dresden, North German Confederation |
| Died | May 31, 1963 (aged 95) Washington, D.C. |
| Occupation | Classical scholar, author |
| Nationality | German, American |
| Period | 1930–1957 |
| Subject |
Ancient Greece Greek philosophy Mythology |
Edith Hamilton (August 12, 1867 – May 31, 1963) was an American educator and author who was "recognized as the greatest woman Classicist." She was 62 years old when The Greek Way, her first book, was published in 1930. It was instantly successful, and is the earliest expression of her belief in "the calm lucidity of the Greek mind" and "that the great thinkers of Athens were unsurpassed in their mastery of truth and enlightenment."
In 1957, when the Book-of-the-Month Club selected The Greek Way (1930) as a featured book, it enhanced her efforts at directing the American mind towards Ancient Greece, despite it having been published twenty-seven years earlier. Moreover, by then, she already had published other books, among them The Roman Way (1932), Mythology (1942), and The Echo of Greece (1957); to date, at the high school and university levels, Mythology remains the premier introductory text about its subject. The New York Times has described her as the Classical Scholar who "brought into clear and brilliant focus the Golden Age of Greek life and thought ... with Homeric power and simplicity in her style of writing".
Edith Hamilton was born in Dresden, Germany, to Gertrude Pond Hamilton and Montgomery Hamilton, a scholarly man of leisure; she also had three sisters, Alice, Margaret, and Norah. Describing her Fort Wayne, Indiana, childhood, she said, "My father was well-to-do, but he wasn't interested in making money; he was interested in making people use their minds"; thus, her father guided her towards the Classics, and, when she was seven years old, he began teaching her Latin, then French, German, and Greek.
In the early 1880s, she attended Miss Porter's Finishing School for Young Ladies (now known as Miss Porter's School) in Farmington, Connecticut, afterwards attending Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania. Upon earning her B.A. and M.A. degrees she won the Mary E. Garrett European Fellowship, which allowed her to continue her studies in Germany.
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