posted on 17 Oct 2023

American Classicist: The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton by Victoria Houseman

I imagine that the name of Edith Hamilton (1867 – 1963) will be a new one for very many British readers but this comprehensive and probing biography, which comes courtesy of Princeton University Press, may well put some new book lovers on her track. Victoria Houseman makes the point that Hamilton never sold well in the UK despite being something of an institution in the US but there her books have largely stayed in print since their initial publication. Her work has also drawn wider acclaim and she was feted too in Greece for her popularisation of Classical Greek culture.

As the title of this book suggests, Edith Hamilton was steeped in the Classics: the literature, art and life of Ancient Greece and Rome. From her early days she developed a passion for Classical Greek theatre and harboured a desire to become an academic working in that field. But, in fact, that is not the direction her life took her in and instead of an academic career she was destined to become an educator, populariser and advocate of the Classical world.

After abandoning her primary goal of working for her doctorate she took on the task of Headteacher at  Bryn Mawr School, a private prep school for girls in Baltimore. And this is where she stayed until negotiating a somewhat acrimonious exit in 1922.

Leaving behind her formal role in education became the trigger she needed to move on to the next phase of her life as a writer. Her subsequent books, The Greek Way and The Roman Way attracted some criticism from academic sources but turned out to be popular with the lay public who appreciated the way Hamilton was able to explain why the Classical world had significance to a modern audience.

Probably her most successful and popular book was the 1942 Mythology in which she recounted the myths of Greece and Rome (and some Norse myths too) in a way that updated the somewhat more mannered and stuffy Bulfinch’s Mythology which had previous been the predominant text.

Hamilton was also a committed Christian and took on the task of trying to explain how a combination of Classical study and Christian doctrine underpins Western cultural traditions and how both remained necessary and relevant in a 20th century context – especially as a way of processing the lessons of two terrible wars.

But this biography is not just the story of a woman driven by a desire to communicate her passions and beliefs about the significance of the Classics or of Christianity. It is also the story of a woman who lived a private life that may seem interesting and, for most people, uncontroversial today but which, in her own time was extraordinary. Hamilton lived the life of an open lesbian – her two great passions, Lucy Donnelly and Doris Fielding Reid shared her life and provided her with support – but this was no scandalous or shocking lifestyle: quite the opposite. Despite the usual social opprobrium that would normally descend on those prepared to defy convention, Edith’s household caused barely a ripple of comment from those who spent their time with her.  

These bare bones of Hamilton’s life are only an inadequate summation of a treasure trove of remarkable details that Victoria Houseman is able to set out in a narrative that’s informed by an immense focus on detail. Edith Hamilton was a new name to me but one of the key impressions I’m left with after reading this is of a woman who was, in many ways, a package of competing and even contradictory views and opinions: at one level a radical who fought for women’s suffrage and demanded individual freedom of thought and action but at another level someone who was deeply conservative, almost an apologist for or advocate of Western cultural hegenomy. Her abiding message distils down to two immutable ‘truths’ that she never tired of communicating – the importance and richness of the ideas of the Classical world and their significance to modern readers; and, the need for Christian values to provide a moral compass in a world of chaos and violence.

 

Available now from Princeton University Press, you’ll be able to order this from your local independent bookshop.

 

Terry Potter

October 2023