Florence Harmer


Florence Elizabeth Harmer FBA was an English historian, specializing in the Anglo-Saxon period. Translating from Old English and Latin, she edited a number of primary sources for early English history, and her Anglo-Saxon Writs remains a standard text.

Life

Born at Mitcham, then in Surrey, Harmer was the daughter of Horace Alfred Harmer, an exporter of goods to Southern Africa, by his marriage to Harriett Frances Butler. She was educated at the City of London School for Girls, from where she gained a scholarship to Girton College, Cambridge and prepared for the Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos.
From 1920 until 1957 Harmer was an academic of the University of Manchester, becoming a Senior Lecturer in 1949 and a Reader in 1955. After she retired in 1957, she lived at Pinner, near a sister, continuing to attend meetings of the British Academy, of which she was a Fellow, and events at Cambridge. She was a friend of Dorothy Whitelock, who wrote her obituary after she died in 1967.

Selected publications