Latham, Agnes (Mary Christabel) 1905-1996

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LATHAM, Agnes (Mary Christabel) 1905-1996

PERSONAL: Born January 31, 1905, in Wakefield, England; died January 13, 1996, in Pickering, England. Education: Somerville College, Oxford, B.A. (first honors), 1926.

CAREER: University of London, Bedford College, London, England, lecturer, 1946-58, reader in English literature, 1958-1975.

AWARDS, HONORS: Spearman Medal, British Psychological Society, 1984.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, Constable (London, England), 1929.

Satire on Literary Themes and Modes in Nashe's"Unfortunate Traveller," [London, England], 1948.

(Editor) Sir Walter Raleigh, Selected Prose and Poetry, University of London Press (London, England), 1965.

(Editor) William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Methuen (London, England), 1975.

(Editor, with Joyce Youings) Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh, University of Exeter Press (Exeter, England), 1999.

[Sir Walter spelled his name "Ralegh," but the prevailing modern form is "Raleigh."]

SIDELIGHTS: Best known for her seminal work as editor of The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh, published when she was just twenty-four years old, Agnes Latham was born into a world where female scholars found it extremely difficult to find academic employment. Even after publication of the poems, she taught at a number of secondary schools until finally securing a position at the University of London's Bedford College in 1946. There she remained for the next three decades, pursuing her interest in Raleigh's life and works to the exclusion of virtually every other writer, except Shakespeare. Even after retirement to North Yorkshire in 1975, she continued to collect and edit Raleigh's letters as part of the Canada Council's effort to publish the whole of Raleigh's works. Ultimately, illness and her distance from the major collections forced her to relinquish the project, but by that time, "All the really hard work had been done," wrote her coeditor, Joyce Youings. Published in 1999, The Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh is the first comprehensive collection since Edward Edwards's 1868 edition. They reveal all the complexities of this Elizabethan poet, adventurer, and courtier, by turns the most admired and most hated man in England. Raleigh was "careful of his reputation in life and in death; and these letters help to show, among much else, how he fashioned his own image. This splendidly edited and finely produced volume deserves our gratitude for helping us to enjoy the prose of a remarkable man and a fine writer," concluded Penry Williams in the English Historical Review.