Inspirational People: 3. Kathleen Freeman – Classicist and Fiction Writer

For the third instalment of our “Inspirational People” series, we are looking at the inspirational life of an early Classicist at the University.

Name:  

Kathleen Freeman

Profession:

Lecturer in Greek

Date:

Appointed 1919 – Resigned 1946

AKA:                   

Mary Fitt (1936–60)

Stuart Mary Wick (1948; 1950)

Clare St. Donat (1950)

Caroline Cory (1956)

• Kathleen Freeman was a prolific fiction writer and published a large number of works, predominantly detective stories, under the above pseudonyms.
• She studied at Cardiff, graduating with her BA in 1918. Her registration form is reproduced below. She also went on to obtain a Masters’ Degree in 1922 and a DLitt in 1940.
• In the Second World War, she gave lectures on Greece to forces stationed in south Wales.
• She resigned following the War in 1946 and focused on publishing books on classical subjects for a non-academic audience.
• If you want to know more, there’s a really interesting blog post about Katherine Freeman which discusses the implicit sexism surrounding the reception of her work. The post is written by Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at King’s College London, who argues that Freeman has long been grossly and unfairly underestimated by scholars and that her work should be recognised as both useful and worthwhile. (The blog post, ‘How to Conceal a Female Scholar; or, the Invisible Classicist of Cardiff’ is available at http://edithorial.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/how-to-conceal-female-scholar-or.html.)