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Margaret Hubbard (16 June 1924 – 28 April 2011) was an Australian-born British classical scholar specialising in philology.

Career

Hubbard excelled during her school career at Adelaide High School, which she attended on receipt of a Government bursary won in 1938.^[1] Upon graduating from high school she won the Tennyson medal for the top place in the leaving examinations, and Annie Montgomerie Martin prize for coming top in modern history.^[1] She then studied for an undergraduate degree at the University of Adelaide, reading Latin, English and Greek there,.^[2] She was then awarded a scholarship to attend Somerville College, Oxford in 1948 to study Classics, the first time this scholarship had been awarded to an overseas applicant without an interview.^[3] Hubbard graduated in 1953 with a First Class Degree.^[4]^: 247 In 1949 she won the Dorothy McCalman Scholarship, bequeathed by Winifred Holtby, and in 1950 was awarded the Hertford Scholarship and Craven Scholarship.^[4]^: 224 She was the first woman to win the Hertford Scholarship.^[4]^: 224 The following year, she won the Ireland Scholarship, which has been described as "the most distinguished Classical award open to members of [Oxford] University."^[4]^: 224 She followed this with two further awards, the Craven Fellowship and the Passmore Edwards Scholarship.^[4]^: 224

She worked for a brief period at the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich,^[2] before becoming Mary Somerville Research Fellow at Somerville College from 1955 to 1957.^[4]^: 224 In 1957 she moved to St Anne's College as a tutor, a post she held for the remainder of her career.^[4]^: 224 From 1957 to 1986, she was a tutor and Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford,^[5] making her one of St Anne's College's 15 founding fellows.^[6] The noted novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch was also among this group, and dedicated her 1962 novel An Unofficial Rose to Hubbard.^[7]^[8] It was the potential public scandal of an affair between Murdoch and Hubbard which caused Murdoch to resign her own fellowship at St Annes in 1962.^[9]^[10] Hubbard served as University Assessor in 1964–5.^[11]

She spent her retirement travelling, cooking, reading, and doing jigsaws with her "adored companion" and partner Gwynneth Matthews, who had been a tutor in Ancient Philosophy at St Anne's,^[8]^[12] and with whom she had lived since at least the 1960s.^[13]^: 103 In 2007 she was elected to an honorary fellowship at St Anne's, and the following year a one-day conference was held to commemorate Hubbard's work.^[8] In her will she gave money to fund the college's Fellowship in Classical Languages and Literature, named after her father, A.E. Hubbard.^[14] She died in 2011.^[8] Hubbard has been described as "one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern age".^[8]

Scholarship

Hubbard worked primarily on Latin literature. Her major works include a "monumentally authoritative" commentary on Horace in two volumes (1970 and 1978),^[5] produced with Robin Nisbet, described as "models of lucidity and of learning."^[8] She also wrote a study of Propertius (1974), who she declared to be the "author she loved best".^[8] Her other work included articles on Virgil,^[15] Horace,^[16] and Propertius.^[17] Eduard Fraenkel when asked to write about her suitability for the post as a tutor of Classics commented (quoted in her obituary), "When asked to say something about Margaret, I must face the risk of being charged with indulging in superlatives. She is really extraordinary."^[8]

Selected works

Nisbet, R. G. M.; Hubbard, Margaret (1970). A commentary on Horace: Odes, Book I. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198144397.
Nisbet, R. G. M.; Hubbard, Margaret (1978). A commentary on Horace: Odes, Book 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198144526.

References

^ ^a ^b "Girl Wins Tennyson Medal". Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954). 13 January 1940. p. 22. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
^ ^a ^b "Margaret Hubbard (1924-2011)". AWAWS.
^ "Remarkable Scholarship Of S.A. Graduate". Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954). 18 September 1953. p. 15.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Brittain, Vera (1960). The Women at Oxford. London: George G. Harrap & Co. ltd.
^ ^a ^b "Founding Fellows - Margaret Hubbard". St Anne’s College. University of Oxford. Retrieved 14 January 2017.
^ "St Anne's College, Oxford > About the College > Founding Fellows". www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk. Retrieved 21 July 2017.
^ Murdoch, Iris (30 October 2008). An Unofficial Rose. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4070-1824-9.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h "Margaret Hubbard". The Times. 13 May 2011. Retrieved 14 January 2017.
^ "Victoria Glendinning - Ink & Inclination". Literary Review.
^ Mullan, John (15 December 2015). "The amorous intensity of Iris Murdoch's letters". New Statesman.
^ Smith, David. "St Anne's College: 1952 – 2012" (PDF). St Anne's College Histories.
^ "Margaret Hubbard (1924-2011)". AWAWS.
^ Somerville College. "College Report 2010-11". Retrieved 22 September 2021.
^ Annual Review 2011 (PDF), St Anne's College, pp. 14, 19
^ Hubbard, M. (1975). "The Capture of Silenus". The Cambridge Classical Journal. 21: 53–62. doi:10.1017/S0068673500003692.
^ Hubbard, Margaret (December 1977). "Two Questions About the Sixteenth Epode". The Classical Quarterly. 27 (2): 356–358. doi:10.1017/S0009838800035680. S2CID 170349195.
^ Hubbard, Margaret E. (December 1968). "Propertiana". The Classical Quarterly. 18 (2): 315–319. doi:10.1017/S0009838800022151.