Edward Oswald Gabriel Turville-Petre F.B.A. was an English philologist who was Professor of Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at the University of Oxford. He wrote numerous books and articles in English and Icelandic on Norse mythology and Icelandic literature. His works on these subjects are still considered authoritative.
Life
Gabriel Turville-Petre was born his family's ancestral home of Bosworth Hall, Husbands Bosworth, Leicestershire in on 25 March 1908. He was the fourth of the five children of Lieutenant-Colonel Oswald Henry Philip Turville-Petre, who was the high sheriff of Leicestershire, and Margaret Lucy, née Cave. The family belonged to the Roman Catholiclanded gentry of England. His older brother was the archaeologist Francis Turville-Petre. Turville-Petre was educated at Ampleforth College and entered Christ Church, Oxford University in 1926, taking a third there in 1930. He studied for a B.Litt in English from 1931 to 1934 and was supervised by J. R. R. Tolkien, graduating in 1936. Along with Alan S. C. Ross, he was strongly influenced by Charles Leslie Wrenn. Turville-Petre studied Icelandic and early Scandinavian literature and traditions from an early age, first in England and later in Iceland and in other Scandinavian countries. From 1936 to 1938 Turville-Petre was Lektor in English at the University of Iceland, during which he served as the British pro-consul in Reykjavik. For a time he also lectured at the University of Turku. Turville-Petre was appointed the first Vigfusson Reader in Ancient Icelandic Literature and Antiquities at Oxford University in 1941, and was appointed Professor in 1953. He held the position until his retirement in 1975. He was created a Knight of the Order of the Falcon in 1963, a member of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, and an honorary Life Member of the Viking Society for Northern Research. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1973. Gabriel Turville-Petre was the author of numerous books and articles, and his Origins of Icelandic Literature and Myth and Religion of the North are still considered the best accounts of Icelandic literature and Norse mythology in English. Fluent in other North Germanic languages, in addition to German and several Celtic languages, Turville-Petre did pioneering research on parallels between Celtic and Germanic literature and mythology. Turville-Petre married Joan Elizabeth Blomfield on 7 January 1943. She was herself a distinguished scholar on Old Norse. They had three sons: Thorlac Francis Samuel, Merlin Oswald and Brendan Arthur Auberon. Turville-Petre died of cancer in Oxford on 17 February 1978. He bequeathed his personal library to the English Faculty Library of Oxford University. At Oxford, an annual prize for distinguished work in Old Norse and Icelandic studies by a student is given in his name, and the room which houses the university's collection of books on these subjects is named after him.
