Elizabeth Elstob

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Portrait of Elizabeth Elstob from the book An English-Saxon homily on the birth-day of St. Gregory (1709)

Elizabeth Elstob (born September 29, 1683 in Newcastle upon Tyne , † May 30, 1756 in Bulstrode Park , Buckinghamshire ) was an early scholar of the Old English language . She is considered one of the first English " proto-feminists ".

biography

Elizabeth Elstob was born in Quayside , a region in Newcastle upon Tyne , where she also grew up. She was the youngest of eight children. When she was five years old, her father Ralph Elstob (1647–1688), a respected merchant , died. Her mother Jane, who was a great book lover and had encouraged her children to study, followed him in 1691. Her uncle Charles Elstob, a younger brother of the father and preliminaries in Canterbury , she and her older brother William to himself. He despised the linguistic training of women because he believed that "one tongue is enough for a woman". He stopped her Latin lessons , while she was allowed to continue learning French . She probably received support from her aunt Matilda (Charles' wife), who spoke fluent French herself. Elizabeth Elstob lived with uncle and aunt first in Canterbury and from 1697 in the village of Tillington in Sussex .

Elizabeth's brother William Elstob (1673-1715) was sent to Eton College and Cambridge and entered the service of the Church. Like his sister, he was a scholar and published the letters of Roger Ascham in 1703 . Elizabeth lived with him from 1696 in Oxford and from 1702 in London , where William had been appointed rector of the parish of St Swithin London Stone with St Mary Bothaw .

Without the restrictions of her uncle Charles and with the support of her brother William, Elstob completed her education during this time; so she improved her knowledge of Latin and learned Greek. William Elstob introduced his sister to a small, committed circle of scholars around George Hickes who were interested in Anglo-Saxon history and culture, so-called "Saxonists". From 1702 Elizabeth Elstob also belonged to a circle of female intellectuals around the writer and feminist Mary Astell , who like her came from Newcastle upon Tyne. Although Elstob also referred to the question of women in her publications, her preferred interest lay in Anglo-Saxon studies. Astell supported Elstob, subscribers to their Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (1715), the first English-language grammar of Old English . She was given nicknames such as Saxon nymph or Saxon lady by contemporary scholars .

1708 Elizabeth Elstob translated the Discours de la gloire of Madeleine de Scudéry into English - probably for training purposes - and published in 1709 an annotated translation of An English-Saxon homily on the birth-day of St. Gregory of Ælfric from the 10th century. Both works are dedicated to the British Queen Anne and in their forewords emphasize the importance of education for women, but also the "purity" of the Anglo-Saxon Church. Elstob also spanned a religious arc from the Virgin Mary to Saint Helena (who, according to legend, had a British father) and Saint Bertha to Queen Anne. At the beginning of the book, the author asks the question “What has a woman to do with learning?” And refers to other learned women, including the Dutch polymath Anna Maria von Schürmann .

In the following years the Elstob siblings were busy with various literary projects. Elizabeth Elstob, for example, assisted her brother between 1709 and 1712 in the preparation of an edition of Anglo-Saxon laws and in the publication of the Old English Orosius , a historical work by Orosius . Elizabeth Elstob turned to Queen Anne, who promised her support in 1714, to fund these projects. But before that happened, the queen died in 1714.

The following year William Elstob died, leaving his sister Elizabeth homeless but with heavy debts that had been used to finance the joint publications. After she had previously supported the Stewart Queen Anne with journalism, the House of Hanover was now in power, and the doors for further support were often closed for Elizabeth Elstob as a result. In the same year, her mentor and one of her most determined supporters died with George Hickes . In 1718 she founded a school for girls from poor families in Chelsea , which was very popular so that she “hardly had time to eat”. But since they only charged four groats per week, the school went bankrupt after six months .

In 1718 Elizabeth Elstob fled from her creditors in London and had to leave her books and a partial manuscript of the Catholic Homilies of Ælfric , on which she had worked for ten years. She had given these papers to a friend in safe hands. This moved to the Caribbean , which is why contact between the two women broke off and Elstob remained unaware of the whereabouts of the papers. Apparently her uncle Charles Elstob acquired the documents without her knowledge (they had quarreled), some of which came into the possession of the antiquarian Joseph Ames after his death and were sold at auction in 1760 . The documents ended up in the British Library via a detour . The manuscript with the edition of Anglo-Saxon laws was not among them; William Elstob had made the manuscript, consisting of three volumes, available to a fellow scholar to study. Apparently they then passed into the hands of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle and patron of Elstob. Two of the volumes made a detour to Sotheby’s , where they were sold in 1896; 30 years later, one of the volumes was bought by the Bodleian Library at another auction . The whereabouts of the second volume is unknown. Finally, the third volume was acquired in 1999 by Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya and placed in his collection at Yale University .

She then lived for many years in Evesham under the name Francis Smith . She ran a small school for women and was financially dependent on friends. Her whereabouts in the scholarly community were apparently unknown until 1735, when the headmistress Sarah Chapone wrote a circular to former friends asking for help for Elizabeth Elstob. From this time on, Elstob led years of correspondence with the biographer George Ballard , for whose book Memoirs of several ladies of Great Britain she wrote a short biographical note about herself.

In the fall of 1738 Elizabeth Elstob was introduced to Margaret Cavendish Bentinck , Duchess of Portland , by friends . The Duchess signed Elstob as the governess of her children. This post, which offered her a home and financial security, she held - often interrupted by periods of illness - until her death on May 30, 1756. She was buried in the churchyard of St Margaret's Church in Westminster .

Works

Literature (selection)

  • Norma Clarke: Elizabeth Elstob (1674–1752): England's first professional woman historian? In: Gender & History . tape 17 , 2005, pp. 210-20 , doi : 10.1111 / j.0953-5233.2005.00378.x ( wiley.com ).
  • Sarah H. Collins: The Elstobs and the end of the Saxon revival . In: Carl T. Berkhout et.al. (Ed.): Anglo-Saxon Scholarship: the first three centuries . GK Hall, Boston, MA 1982, ISBN 0-8161-8321-X , pp. 107-18 .
  • Timothy Graham: William Elstob's Planned Editions of the Anglo-Saxon Laws; A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection . In: Toshiyuki Takamiya (ed.): Poetica. International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies . Yushodo Press, Tokyo 1982, ISBN 0-8161-8321-X , pp. 109-141 .
  • Mechtild Gretsch: Elizabeth Elstob: a scholar's fight for Anglo-Saxon studies . In: Anglia . tape 117 , 2020, p. 163-300, 481-524 .
  • Mechthild Gretsch: Elstob, Elizabeth (1683–1756) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • Shaun FD Hughes: Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) and the limits of women's agency in early eighteenth-century England . In: Jane Chance (ed.): Women Medievalists and the Academy . University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI 2005, ISBN 0-299-20750-1 , pp. 3-24 .

Web links

Commons : Elizabeth Elstob  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Mechthild Gretsch: Elstob, Elizabeth (1683–1756), Anglo-Saxon scholar. In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. September 23, 2004, accessed April 29, 2020 .
  2. ^ Hughes, Elizabeth Elstob , p. 3.
  3. ^ A b Hughes, Elizabeth Elstob , p. 4.
  4. ↑ Patricia Shaw Fairman: Mediaeval studies . Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo 2000, p. 234 .
  5. ^ Hughes, Elizabeth Elstob , pp. 8/9.
  6. ^ Hughes, Elizabeth Elstob , p. 9.
  7. ^ Hughes, Elizabeth Elstob , p. 12.
  8. ^ Hughes, Elizabeth Elstob , p. 15.
  9. ↑ Bridget Hill: Women Alone: ​​Spinsters in England, 1660-1850 . Yale University Press, 2001, ISBN 978-0-300-19801-0 , pp. 89/90 .
  10. ^ A b Hughes, Elizabeth Elstob , p. 12.
  11. ^ Graham, William Elstob , p. 133.
  12. ^ Graham, William Elstob , pp. 133/134.
  13. ^ John Chambers, Biographical Illustrations of Worcestershire (1820), p. 347.
personal data
SURNAME Elstob, Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION early scholars of the Old English language
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1683
PLACE OF BIRTH Newcastle upon Tyne
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1756
Place of death Bulstrode Park , Buckinghamshire