Margaret Alford

Margaret Alford was an English classicist and pioneering academic who achieved a First at Cambridge University in 1887, a time when women were not formally awarded degrees. She spent more than two decades teaching at schools and universities, while publishing and editing many books. She specialised in Latin prose, particularly the works of Livy, Tacitus and Cicero, an area almost entirely dominated by male scholars.

Education

Margaret Alford was born in Leavenheath, Suffolk, but spent most of her life in London. She was taught ancient Greek from an early age by her father, Bradley Hurt Alford, a Church of England clergyman and author. Her mother, Caroline Alexa Lyall, was the elder sister of Sir Charles James Lyall. Her sister was Dorothy Banks. She attended Maida Vale High School, a girls' day school in London. She spent two terms at Bedford College, London as a Trustees Scholar, before transferring to Girton College, Cambridge, where she graduated with a First in 1887. Here JP Postgate, the well-known supporter of women in higher education, supervised her Latin prose composition. Her older sister, Dorothy studied Natural Sciences at the same college. Punch magazine noted, and satirised, the success of women in Classics at Cambridge at the time, and of the two women's colleges Girton and Newnham; Alford was mentioned as 'a Classical First' in a verse called ''The Ladies' Year''

Career

1891–1917: Visiting Lecturer at Girton College
1894–1919: Visiting Lecturer at Westfield College, London
1904–1909: Head of Department of Latin at Bedford College, London
1918–1943: Managed the periodicals for the joint Societies, and served on the council for the Hellenic Society

During the period of 1942-1945, she served as the only woman on the editorial staff of the Oxford Latin Dictionary. Alford worked on other books including Liddell-Scott-Jones's Greek-English Lexicon, Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon, and index to H. M. Allen's edition of the letters of Erasmus

Awards and honours

1943: Elected to Honorary Fellowship of Girton
1943: Awarded with an honorary MA from the University of Oxford

Published works

Throughout her career as a university lecturer, Alford published a number of books, mostly commentaries on Latin texts:Livy, Book V Latin prose for translation: for the use of higher forms in school and of students working for pass degrees Versions of Latin Passages for Translation Tacitus, Histories, Book I Cicero, Letters to Atticus, Book II

''Livy, Book II''