Kathleen Freeman (classicist)

Kathleen Freeman (22 June 1897 – 21 February 1959) was a British classical scholar and (under the pseudonym Mary Fitt) author of detective novels. She was a Lecturer in Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff between 1919 and 1946. From some time in the 1930s until her death Freeman lived with her friend Liliane Marie Catherine Clopet at Lark's Rise, a house in St Mellons (now a district of Cardiff).[1]

Early life, education and academic career

Kathleen Freeman was born at Yardley, Birmingham and was the daughter of a commercial traveller (Charles H Freeman) and Catherine (Mawdesley). She attended the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff where she studied with Professor Gilbert Norwood. Following her graduation in 1918 (when she was awarded a BA), she remained there and was appointed Lecturer in Greek in 1919 and earned further degrees (MA 1922, DLitt 1940).[2]

During the Second World War Freeman delivered lectures on Greece to the Ministry of Information and in the National Scheme of Education for HM Forces in South Wales and Monmouthshire. She further contributed to the war effort with her selections of translations from Greek authors which featured in The Western Mail, a Cardiff-based newspaper. These were later published as the book, It Has All Happened Before: What the Greeks Thought of their Nazis (1941). Her publications Voices of Freedom (1943), What They Said at the Time: A Survey of the Causes of the Second World War (1945) and her work with the Philosophical Society of England, where she acted as Supervisor of Studies from 1948 to 1952, are further testimony to her desire to make Greek ideas accessible through translation. Freeman resigned from the university in 1946 in order to pursue her research and writing.[3]

Publications

Fiction-writing career

Freeman enjoyed success as a writer of fiction and wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Fitt (1936–60), Stuart Mary Wick (1948; 1950), Clare St. Donat (1950) and Caroline Cory (1956).[4] In 1926, in addition to her study The Work and Life of Solon, Freeman published a collection of short stories The Intruder and Other Stories and her first novel Martin Hanner. A Comedy. In 1936 she chose the pseudonym Mary Fitt for her mysteries, writing 27 books and a number of short stories, many of which feature detective Inspector (later Superintendent) Mallett. She also wrote a number of children's stories and T'other Miss Austen (1956), a study of Jane Austen.[5]

Notes

  1. ↑ For a brief note on Liliane Clopet, her career and her writings see Biography and bibliography by M. Eleanor Irwin and How to Conceal a Female Scholar; or, the Invisible Classicist of Cardiff by Edith Hall.
  2. ↑ Irwin (2004), 343.
  3. ↑ Irwin (2004), 343-4.
  4. ↑ Irwin (2004), 344.
  5. ↑ For a comprehensive list of Freeman's writings see Biography and bibliography by M. Eleanor Irwin.

References

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