Margaret Alford


Margaret Alford was a pioneering woman classicist who achieved a First at Cambridge University in 1887, a time when women were not formally awarded degrees. She spent more than two decades teaching at schools and universities, while publishing and editing many books. She specialised in Latin prose, particularly the works of Livy, Tacitus and Cicero, an area almost entirely dominated by male scholars.

Education

Margaret Alford was taught ancient Greek from an early age by her father, Bradley Hurt Alford, a Church of England clergyman. She attended Maida Vale High School, a girls' day school in London. She spent two terms at Bedford College, London as a Trustees Scholar, before transferring to Girton College, Cambridge, where she graduated with a First in 1887. Here JP Postgate, the well-known supporter of women in higher education, supervised her Latin prose composition. Her older sister, Dorothy studied Natural Sciences at the same college. Punch magazine noted, and satirised, the success of women in Classics at Cambridge at the time, and of the two women's colleges Girton and Newnham; Alford was mentioned as 'a Classical First' in a verse called The Ladies' Year

Main posts and achievements

Throughout her career as a university lecturer, Alford published a number of books, mostly commentaries on Latin texts: