Edith Rickert

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Edith Rickert (before 1904)

Martha Edith Rickert (born July 11, 1871 in Canal Dover , Ohio , † May 21, 1938 in Chicago ) was an American historian and author .

biography

Edith Rickert was the eldest of four daughters (her sisters were Ethel, Edna and Margaret ) of the pharmacist couple Josephine and Francis Rickert; the family lived in modest circumstances. She grew up in La Grange , Illinois and attended a public school in Chicago. She received a scholarship to Vassar Women's College , which was a "momentous event" for her family. Her parents supported her as much as possible, even if her financial resources were limited. So the father worried whether his daughter Edith could keep up with other, better-off students in terms of clothing.

Edith Rickert developed her interest in creative writing in Vassar . She received an award for the best short story written by an American student. In 1891 she did her bachelor's degree . She then left Vassar to take care of her family after her mother's death and to work as a teacher. Her real passion was research, the teaching profession only served her to earn a living. In 1890 she wrote to her parents: “I am perfectly delighted with some old books which I found in the library to-day, Bibles, Latin authors and long harangues and discourses (in Latin also) of people long forgotten, Brentius, Arnobius and others "(" I was very happy about some old books that I found in the library today, Bibles, Latin authors and long sermons and speeches (also in Latin) by long-forgotten people, Brentius, Arnobius and others "). From 1894 Rickert studied English literature and philology at the newly founded University of Chicago and received his doctorate in 1899 with a study of the Middle English romance Emaré . She continued to earn her living as a teacher.

In 1900 Edith Rickert decided to continue her studies in England , after having spent an academic year there in 1896 and enjoying the country, despite the "outrageous poverty" there. She spent nine productive years in England and made trips, including to the European continent. While researching and editing medieval texts, she published five novels: Out of Cypress Swamp (1902), The Reaper (1904), Folly (1906), The Golden Hawk (1907) and The Beggar in the Heart (1909), with which she earned her money. In addition, she wrote 80 short stories, 50 of which have been published. She returned to America for financial reasons in 1909 and settled in Boston , where she became an editor at DC Heath & Co. and the Ladies' Home Journal .

After the American involvement in World War I began , Edith Rickert moved to Washington, DC in 1918 and accepted a position as a cryptographer in the War Department on the mediation of John Matthews Manly , Professor of English at the University of Chicago . Manly had taken a leave of absence to serve as a captain in military intelligence. After the war, Rickert and Manly worked together on several publications such as The Writing of English (1919), Contemporary British Literature (1921), Contemporary American Literature (1922) and other popular textbooks. In 1924 Rickert joined the faculty of the University of Chicago as an associate professor of English; In 1930 she was appointed professor of English and stayed with the faculty until her retirement in 1935. Writing in all forms was an outstanding part of Rickert's work. In an attempt to establish and define guidelines for analyzing a writing style, she wrote New Methods for the Study of Literature (1927). While the scientific activity was in the foreground of her work, she also published three volumes with children's fairy tales and her last novel Severn Woods (1930).

Rickert's life's work was a critically commented edition of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer based on all known manuscripts on which she worked with John Manly. From 1930 Rickert and Manly spent part of the year in England researching manuscripts of the valley , researching Chaucer's life and instructing a staff of the Public Record Office . They spent the rest of the year in Chicago, where Rickert gave courses in medieval and modern literature and wrote her specialist publications.

In 1936 Edith Rickert suffered a heart attack from which she never fully recovered, and on May 23, 1938 she died after a stroke at the age of 66. She was cremated and her ashes were buried in Oak Woods Cemetery , Chicago. Her work with Manly on Chaucer, in eight volumes, was published in 1940, a few months before Manly died too. Additional Rickert material was published in 1948 by two of her former students under the title Chaucer's World . Manly and Rickert were posthumously awarded the Haskins Medal for their work , an award given annually by the Medieval Academy of America for an outstanding book in medieval studies .

In her biography of Rickert, the historian Elizabeth Scala points out that female scientists in Rickert's time were generally not addressed or quoted by their academic title, but were referred to as Miss , in Rickert's case Miss Rickert of Vassar . Reducing them to gender without specifying the academic degree depreciated these educated women and expressed a lack of respect. This Neanderthal practice lasted until the 1960s.

Publications (selection)

  • Out of the Cypress Swamp . London 1902.
  • The Reaper . Grosset & Dunlap, New York 1904.
  • The Bojabi Tree . Doubleday, Page & Company, New York 1923.
  • The Greedy Goroo . Doubleday, Doran & Company, New York 1929.
  • John M. Manly / Edith Rickert (eds.): The Text of the Canterbury Tales: studied on the basis of all known manuscripts . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1940. (posthumous)
  • Clair C. Olson / Martin M. Crow (Eds.): Chaucer's World . Oxford University Press, London 1948. (posthumous)

literature

  • Elizabeth Scala: "Miss Rickert of Vasser" . In: Jane Chance (ed.): Women Medievalists and the Academy . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI 2005, ISBN 0-299-20750-1 , pp. 67-78 .

Web links

Commons : Edith Rickert  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Scala, Miss Rickert of Vasser , p. 127.
  2. ^ Scala, Miss Rickert of Vasser , p. 127.
  3. ↑ a b c d Rickert, Edith (1871–1938). In: encyclopedia.com. Retrieved May 3, 2020 .
  4. ^ Scala, Miss Rickert of Vasser , p. 130.
  5. ↑ a b c d Guide to the Edith Rickert Papers 1858-1960. In: lib.uchicago.edu. Retrieved May 3, 2020 .
  6. ^ Scala, Miss Rickert of Vasser , pp. 131/32.
  7. ^ Scala, Miss Rickert of Vasser , pp. 131/32.
  8. ^ Haskins Medal Recipients. In: medievalacademy.org. August 1, 2018, accessed May 4, 2020 .
  9. ^ Scala, Miss Rickert of Vasser , p. 125.
personal data
SURNAME Rickert, Edith
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rickert, Martha Edith (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American historian and author
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1871
PLACE OF BIRTH Canal Dover , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH May 21, 1938
Place of death Chicago