. Angry Queen
NOT a biography but a portrait of a brilliant, passionate, elderly spinster as she appeared to pupils and colleagues during the last thirty years of her life. The outline is drawn by excerpts from letters written by Jane Harrison to Gilbert Murray between 1900 and 1928, the detail filled in by anecdotal references to her work and life, and personal reminiscences from friends. Rather underexposed amateur photography but a powerful personality shows through. Mrs. Stewart presumes that her readers possess substantial prior knowledge not only of Jane Harrison's professional writing but also of the intricacies of academic politics during the period. So it is mainly a book for nostalgic elderly Cambridge graduates. Jane Harrison was born in 1850. She was one of the first resident pupils of Newnham and at the age of forty-eight she returned to Cambridge as a fellow of her college where she achieved international celebrity as a leader of new fashions in Hellenic studies. In this field her main work had already been completed by 1912 but it is an indication of her vital temperament that in later life she taught Russian, a language she first studied seriously at the age of sixty-five. The originality of her contribution to the study of Ancient Greek religion and drama lay in her attempts to interpret literary texts and archaeological remains by refer- ence to the findings of contemporary social anthropology. Even today the possibilities of this type of comparison have been very imperfectly explored but Jane Harrison her- self vastly underestimated the difficulties and pitfalls which it entails. Her premature advocacy of a shot-gun marriage between ancient scholarship and the study of modern society lacked all discretion, and the hostility aroused by her uncritical enthu- siasm for Durkheim has hampered the development of Cambridge sociology ever since.
But the interest of this book centres in Jane Harrison's personality and period rather than in the causes for which she was protagonist. In 1910, the Athena-like figure of an embattled female don scattering male adversaries in all directions was quite some- thing to remember. The book includes a very full bibliography of writings by and about Jane Harrison, including some that are unpublished.
EDMUND LEACH
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