Eleanor Duckett
| Eleanor Shipley Duckett | |
|---|---|
| Born |
7 November 1880 Bridgwater, Somerset, England |
| Died | 23 November 1976 (aged 96) |
| Nationality | English |
| Education | MA, PhD |
| Alma mater | University of London, Bryn Mawr College |
| Occupation | Historian, philologist, writer, professor |
| Known for | Gateway to the Middle Ages, The Wandering Saints of the Early Middle Ages |
Eleanor Shipley Duckett (7 November 1880, Bridgwater, Somerset, England – 23 November 1976) was an English-born philologist and medieval historian who spent most of her career in the United States. For thirty years, she taught at Smith College (Northampton, Massachusetts). Duckett published a number of books with University of Michigan Press, mainly on European history, religious history, and saints, and was a reviewer for The New York Times Book Review. Initially, Duckett was known for writing accessible historical books on the Middle Ages; later, she acquired a reputation as an authority on early medieval saints. A devout Episcopalian, Duckett was the lifelong companion of novelist Mary Ellen Chase.
Duckett received her BA (1903) and MA (1904), as well as a degree in pedagogy (1905), from the University of London, and taught classic literature in high school. After studies at Girton College, Cambridge, which allowed women but did not yet offer a doctoral degree, she went to the United States and on a fellowship attended Bryn Mawr College, where she received her doctorate in 1914. In part, her move toward the United States was motivated by the lack of respect for women scholars in England. In 1964 she recalled how at Cambridge she showed the manuscript of her first book to "an eminent scholar," who asked her, "Do you want me to judge it on its own merits or as the work of a woman?"
In 1914, Duckett attained a position at Western College for Women in Ohio, and in 1916 began teaching Latin at Smith, after 1928 as a full professor, where she would remain the rest of her career. In 1926, she met novelist Mary Ellen Chase, who was from Blue Hill, Maine. They lived together until Chase's death in 1973, and were honored by having adjoining halls named for them on the Smith College campus. In 1928 she was named the John M. Greene Professor of Classical Languages and Literature. She retired in 1949 and was named professor emeritus. In 1952, she finally received her doctorate from Girton College on the basis of her four published books on early medieval history.
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