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Margaret Hubbard

Margaret Hubbard (16 June 1924 – 28 April 2011) was an Australian-born British classical scholar specialising in philology.

Career

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Hubbard excelled during her school career at Adelaide High School, which she attended on receipt of a Government bursary won in 1938.[1] Upon graduating from high school she won the Tennyson medal for the top place in the leaving examinations, and Annie Montgomerie Martin prize for coming top in modern history.[1] She then studied for an undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide, reading Latin, English and Greek there,.[2] She was then awarded a scholarship to attend Somerville College, Oxford in 1948 to study Classics, the first time this scholarship had been awarded to an overseas applicant without an interview.[3] Hubbard graduated in 1953 with a First Class Degree.[4]: 247  In 1949 she won the Dorothy McCalman Scholarship, bequeathed by Winifred Holtby, and in 1950 was awarded the Hertford Scholarship and Craven Scholarship.[4]: 224  She was the first woman to win the Hertford Scholarship.[4]: 224  The following year, she won the Ireland Scholarship, which has been described as "the most distinguished Classical award open to members of [Oxford] University."[4]: 224  She followed this with two further awards, the Craven Fellowship and the Passmore Edwards Scholarship.[4]: 224 

She worked for a brief period at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich,[2] before becoming Mary Somerville Research Fellow at Somerville College from 1955 to 1957.[4]: 224  In 1957 she moved to St Anne's College as a tutor, a post she held for the remainder of her career.[4]: 224  From 1957 to 1986, she was a tutor and Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford,[5] making her one of St Anne's College's 15 founding fellows.[6] The noted novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch was also among this group, and dedicated her 1962 novel An Unofficial Rose to Hubbard.[7][8] It was the potential public scandal of an affair between Murdoch and Hubbard which caused Murdoch to resign her own fellowship at St Annes in 1962.[9][10] Hubbard served as University Assessor in 1964–5.[11]

She spent her retirement travelling, cooking, reading, and doing jigsaws with her "adored companion" and partner Gwynneth Matthews, who had been a tutor in Ancient Philosophy at St Anne's,[8][12] and with whom she had lived since at least the 1960s.[13]: 103  In 2007 she was elected to an honorary fellowship at St Anne's, and the following year a one-day conference was held to commemorate Hubbard's work.[8] In her will she gave money to fund the college's Fellowship in Classical Languages and Literature, named after her father, A.E. Hubbard.[14] She died in 2011.[8] Hubbard has been described as "one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern age".[8]

Scholarship

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Hubbard worked primarily on Latin literature. Her major works include a "monumentally authoritative" commentary on Horace in two volumes (1970 and 1978),[5] produced with Robin Nisbet, described as "models of lucidity and of learning."[8] She also wrote a study of Propertius (1974), who she declared to be the "author she loved best".[8] Her other work included articles on Virgil,[15] Horace,[16] and Propertius.[17] Eduard Fraenkel when asked to write about her suitability for the post as a tutor of Classics commented (quoted in her obituary), "When asked to say something about Margaret, I must face the risk of being charged with indulging in superlatives. She is really extraordinary."[8]

Selected works

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  • Nisbet, R. G. M.; Hubbard, Margaret (1970). A commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198144397.
  • Nisbet, R. G. M.; Hubbard, Margaret (1978). A commentary on Horace: Odes, Book 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198144526.

References

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  1. ^ a b "Girl Wins Tennyson Medal". Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954). 13 January 1940. p. 22. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
  2. ^ a b "Margaret Hubbard (1924-2011)". AWAWS.
  3. ^ "Remarkable Scholarship Of S.A. Graduate". Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954). 18 September 1953. p. 15.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Brittain, Vera (1960). The Women at Oxford. London: George G. Harrap & Co. ltd.
  5. ^ a b "Founding Fellows - Margaret Hubbard". St Anne’s College. University of Oxford. Retrieved 14 January 2017.
  6. ^ "St Anne's College, Oxford > About the College > Founding Fellows". www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
  7. ^ Murdoch, Iris (30 October 2008). An Unofficial Rose. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4070-1824-9.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g h "Margaret Hubbard". The Times. 13 May 2011. Retrieved 14 January 2017.
  9. ^ "Victoria Glendinning - Ink & Inclination". Literary Review.
  10. ^ Mullan, John (15 December 2015). "The amorous intensity of Iris Murdoch's letters". New Statesman.
  11. ^ Smith, David. "St Anne's College: 1952 – 2012" (PDF). St Anne's College Histories.
  12. ^ "Margaret Hubbard (1924-2011)". AWAWS.
  13. ^ Somerville College. "College Report 2010-11". Retrieved 22 September 2021.
  14. ^ Annual Review 2011 (PDF), St Anne's College, pp. 14, 19
  15. ^ Hubbard, M. (1975). "The Capture of Silenus". The Cambridge Classical Journal. 21: 53–62. doi:10.1017/S0068673500003692.
  16. ^ Hubbard, Margaret (December 1977). "Two Questions About the Sixteenth Epode". The Classical Quarterly. 27 (2): 356–358. doi:10.1017/S0009838800035680. S2CID 170349195.
  17. ^ Hubbard, Margaret E. (December 1968). "Propertiana". The Classical Quarterly. 18 (2): 315–319. doi:10.1017/S0009838800022151.
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