Helen Waddell
Personal Information
Description
Born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary who was lecturing in the Imperial University. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before her family returned to Belfast. Waddell was educated at Victoria College for Girls and Queen's University Belfast, where she studied under Professor Gregory Smith, graduating in 1911. She followed her BA with first class honours in English with a master's degree, and in 1919 enrolled in Somerville College, Oxford, to study for her doctorate. A travelling scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall in 1923 allowed her to conduct research in Paris. She is best known for bringing to light the history of the medieval goliards in her 1927 book The Wandering Scholars, and translating their Latin poetry in the companion volume Medieval Latin Lyrics. A second anthology, More Latin Lyrics, was compiled in the 1940s but not published until after her death. Her other works range widely in subject matter. Her historical novel Peter Abelard was published in 1933 and was critically well received and became a bestseller. She also wrote many articles for the Evening Standard, the Manchester Guardian and The Nation, and did lecturing and broadcasting. Waddell received honorary degrees from Columbia, Belfast, Durham and St. Andrews and won the Benson Medal of the Royal Society of Literature. A serious debilitating neurological disease put an end to her writing career in 1950. She died in London in 1965 and was buried in Magherally churchyard, County Down, Northern Ireland. A prize-winning biography of her by the Benedictine nun Dame Felicitas Corrigan was published in 1986.
Books
Medi©Œval Latin lyrics
"Writing excitedly to her sister Meg in 1929, Helen Waddell quotes an early review of Mediaeval Latin Lyrics: 'Miss Waddell has kept her promise well: she promised a volume of translations from those fascinating "vagantes". Some indeed are among the loveliest in any literature; and Miss Waddell has not dulled their brightness. She has come to them not merely with scholarship and literary tact, but with a soul attuned to the thought and feeling and the very idiom of another day. She has the most important of the translator's qualifications - a perfect empathy with her material.'" "Through the marvellous empathy this reviewer unerringly describes, she unlocked some of the secrets and literary achievements of the Middle Ages for the scholar and the general reader alike. The vagantes, to whom the reviewer refers, are also the subject of her earlier book, The Wandering Scholars (1927) which similarly won golden opinions. These two books and her novel Peter Abelard (1933) made her the most famous medievalist of her generation." "And this was no passion fashion. Helen Waddell's books, particularly this one, have informed and inspired generations of medievalists. Mediaeval Latin Lyrics is an authoritative and delightful guide to a period of European civilization and literature, when Latin was still a vibrant means of communication throughout the western world."--Jacket.
Stories from Holy Writ
Retellings of fifteen Old and New Testament Bible stories originally written for publication in "Daybreak," a missionary magazine.
Mediaeval latin lyrics
This selection traces the development of the medieval Latin lyric from its source in the first century A.D. to its full flowering in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The wandering scholars, or vagantes, who flourished in the later Middle Ages, left behind them a splendid harvest of poetry, including the most famous anthology of medieval lyric, the "Carmina Burana". These poems of love and wine, of life and death, were written not to be read, but to be sung; in her translation, which is set alongside the Latin, Helen Waddell succeeds in capturing the rhythmic vitality and youthful flavour of the original.
The wandering scholars
The Wandering Scholars is a non-fiction book by Helen Waddell, first published in 1927 by Constable, London. It deals primarily with medieval Latin lyric poetry and the main part is a study of the goliards. The text includes many of Waddell's own translations of Latin lyrics. The book was at first published in a small edition because it was thought not to have popular appeal, but went through three editions in the first year. It was favourably reviewed by distinguished critics including George Saintsbury, C. H. Haskins and Ferdinand Lot. In recognition of her achievement, Waddell became the first woman to be awarded the A. C. Benson Foundation silver medal by the Royal Society of Literature.
More Latin lyrics, from Virgil to Milton
"The general plan ... is to trace chronologically the Latin influence in Europe for some sixteen hundred years. Each poet's work is prefaced by an editorial note, followed by a passage from Helen Waddell's own published writings."--Jacket.
The desert fathers
By the fourth century A.D., devout Christians--men and women alike--had begun to retreat from cities and villages to the deserts of North Africa and Asia Minor, where they sought liberation from their corrupt society and the confining shell of the social self. The Desert Fathers is the perfect introduction to the stories and sayings of these heroic pioneers of the contemplative tradition. Selected and translated by Helen Waddell, The Desert Fathers opens a window onto early Christianity while presenting us with touchingly human models of faith, humility, and compassion.
Beasts and saints
" ... Stories of the mutual charities between saints and beasts, from the end of the fourth to the end of the twelfth century ... translated from the original Latin" (Translator's note).