Helen Waddell

Helen Jane Waddell ( Tokyo born May 31, 1889, † March 5, 1965 in London) was a Northern Irish writer and translator.

Biography

After visiting the Victoria College for Girls, the daughter of a Presbyterian missionary studied English at Queen's University of Belfast and earned there first in 1911 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA English). After them there with an essay on Milton, the Epicurist also holds a Master of Arts ( MA English) acquired in 1912, she was still a student at Somerville College, Oxford University.

Subsequently, she began her writing career in 1913 with a translation of Chinese poetry under the title Lyrics from the Chinese. In the period following the drama The Spoiled Buddha appeared after the purchase of Philosophiae Doctor ( Ph.D.) at Somerville College: A Play in Two Acts (1919), with the The Wandering Scholars (1927 ) was followed by her best-known work. In it she describes the life of goliards, the wandering in the Middle Ages students and clerics studied in search of a spiritual or secular office. In addition, she worked as a teacher at Bedford College.

After Mediaeval Latin Lyrics (1929 ), a translation of medieval poems from Latin, she wrote the novel Peter Abelard 1933: A Novel about the life of Peter Abelard. Last published her 1949 Stories from Holy Writ. For their literary merits, it was in 1932 a member of the Irish Academy of Letters.

Due to a growing illness of her nervous system they had to end their literary work after 1950.