Jane Ellen Harrison
Jane Ellen Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire on the 9th of September 1850. Her father worked as a timber merchant while her mother died of puerperal fever shortly after Jane's birth. She grew up educated by a series of governesses who taught her German, Latin, Ancient Greek and Hebrew. This early foundation allowed her to expand her knowledge to about sixteen languages including Russian later in life. The young woman from Yorkshire would eventually become the first person in England to hold a post as a career academic.
Between 1880 and 1897 Harrison studied Greek art and archaeology at the British Museum under Sir Charles Newton. She supported herself by lecturing at the museum and at schools mostly private boy's schools. Her lectures became widely popular with 1,600 people attending her Glasgow lecture on Athenian gravestones. She traveled to Italy and Germany where she met Wilhelm Klein from Prague. Klein introduced her to Wilhelm Dörpfeld who invited her to participate in his archaeological tours in Greece. Her approach proceeded from ritual to the myth it inspired rather than the reverse method common earlier.
Harrison became the central figure of the group known as the Cambridge Ritualists. In 1903 her book Prolegomena on the Study of Greek Religion appeared. This work drew on anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor's ideas from his 1871 work Primitive Culture. Harrison argued that religiosity is anti-intellectual yet defended its cultural necessity. Her scholarship applied 19th-century archaeological discoveries to reinterpret ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard today. The group included Francis MacDonald Cornford whom she married until he wed another woman in 1909.
Harrison was at least ideologically a moderate suffragist who did not support women's suffrage by protesting. Rather she applied her scholarship in anthropology to defend women's right to vote. To this end her motto was Terence's homo sum meaning I am a human being and nothing that is human do I account alien. She responded to an anti-suffragist critic with this moderate ideology while arguing for gender equality within Victorian society. Her stance remained distinct from more radical factions of the movement during her lifetime.
Jane Harrison had a compelling and inspirational impact on later artworks by T.S. Eliot Virginia Woolf and Hilda Doolittle. Virginia Woolf discussed Harrison in A Room of One's Own published in 1929 introducing her as the famous scholar could it be J---- H---- herself. The critic Camille Paglia wrote about Harrison's influence on her own work decades later. Harrison's Prolegomena to Greek Religion became formative to the Cambridge ritualists and influenced literary figures across generations. Her scholarly legerdemain shaped how these writers approached myth and ritual in their fiction.
Harrison retired from Newnham College in 1922 after holding her position continuously since 1898. She moved to Paris briefly before returning to London when her health began to fail. During the last two years of her life she lived at 11 Mecklenburgh Square on the fringes of Bloomsbury. She died at age 77 on the 15th of April 1928 at her home there. Her memoirs were published through Leonard and Virginia Woolf's press called The Hogarth Press. She was buried in St Marylebone Cemetery in East Finchley.
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Common questions
When and where was Jane Ellen Harrison born?
Jane Ellen Harrison was born in Cottingham, Yorkshire on the 9th of September 1850. Her father worked as a timber merchant while her mother died of puerperal fever shortly after Jane's birth.
What academic position did Jane Ellen Harrison hold at Newnham College?
Jane Ellen Harrison held her position continuously from 1898 until she retired from Newnham College in 1922. She became the first person in England to hold a post as a career academic.
Which book by Jane Ellen Harrison appeared in 1903 and drew on Edward Burnett Tylor's ideas?
Prolegomena on the Study of Greek Religion appeared in 1903 and drew on anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor's ideas from his 1871 work Primitive Culture. This work applied 19th-century archaeological discoveries to reinterpret ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard today.
How did Jane Ellen Harrison influence later writers like Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot?
Jane Ellen Harrison had a compelling and inspirational impact on later artworks by T.S. Eliot Virginia Woolf and Hilda Doolittle. Her scholarly legerdemain shaped how these writers approached myth and ritual in their fiction.
When and where did Jane Ellen Harrison die?
Jane Ellen Harrison died at age 77 on the 15th of April 1928 at her home located at 11 Mecklenburgh Square on the fringes of Bloomsbury. She was buried in St Marylebone Cemetery in East Finchley.
All sources
20 references cited across the entry
- 2webArchived copy
- 5bookThe invention of Jane HarrisonMary Beard — Harvard Univ. Press — 2002
- 9webJane Ellen HarrisonHolly — 1 October 2019
- 10journalMyths of the Odyssey in the British Museum (and beyond): Jane Ellen Harrison's museum talks and their audienceAbigail Baker — 2020-06-01
- 11bookLife and Work of Jane Ellen HarrisonRobinson, Annabel — Oxford University Press — 2002
- 12journalNeil, Robert Alexander1901
- 13bookJane Ellen Harrison's "Handmaiden No More": Victorian Ritualism and the Fine ArtsRita R. Wright — University of Utah — 2009
- 14bookD.S. Mirsky: A Russian-English Life, 1890–1939Gerald Stanton Smith — Oxford University Press — 2000
- 15bookAlpha and OmegaHarrison, Jane Ellen — Sidgwick & Jackson — 1915
- 16bookSeventy Years in ArchaeologyFlinders Petrie — Henry Holt — 1932
- 18bookAlpha and OmegaHarrison, Jane Ellen — Sidgwick & Jackson — 1915
- 20bookThamyris Vol 1.2Nanny M. W. de Vries, Jan Best — Rodopi
- 21bookAesthetics and Analysis in Writing on Religion: Modern FascinationsDaniel Gold — University of California Press — 2003-06-10