Dominica Legge
{{short description|British scholar of Anglo-Norman}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Mary Dominica Legge
| image = Dominica Legge in Truro August 1930.jpeg
| caption = with glasses in Truro in 1930
| birth_name =
| birth_date = {{birth date|1905|3|26|df=yes}}
| birth_place = Bayswater, London, England
| death_date = {{death date and age|1986|3|10|1905|3|26|df=yes}}
| death_place = Oxford, Oxfordshire, England
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| nationality = British
| alma_mater = Somerville College, Oxford
}}
Professor Mary Dominica Legge, FBA (26 March 1905 – 10 March 1986), known as Dominica Legge, was a British scholar of the Anglo-Norman language.
Life
Legge was born in Bayswater in 1905. Her grandfather was Professor James Legge, and her father James Granville Legge was the Director of Education in Liverpool.
Legge received an education at Liverpool College in Huyton before attending Somerville College, Oxford where she specialised in Medieval French, and in particular the Anglo-Norman language, under the guidance of Mildred Pope.{{cite web|url=http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/works-on-paper/related-person-63320-1.aspx|title=Mary Dominica Legge|website=National Museums Liverpool|access-date=24 November 2018}}Bennett, Philip E. "Legge, (Mary) Dominica (1905–1986), French scholar and historian." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 28 May 2015.
Legge's reputation as a scholar was widely acknowledged by the academic community through election to various fellowships. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1942, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1958, corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 1971, and Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1974.‘LEGGE, Prof. (Mary) Dominica’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2016; online edn, Oxford University Press, 2014; online edn, April 2014 [http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U166296, accessed 23 April 2017]
In 1971 the French government appointed her an officer of the Ordre des Palmes académiques.
Legge has been described as "extremely generous and supportive to students and young colleagues", and she would often invite them to her small flat at 204 Dalkeith Road, Edinburgh, "the walls of which were covered with pictures mostly of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artists, including George du Maurier and J. B. Yeats; there they would be offered tea or coffee and warned to be careful with the cups because 'Oscar Wilde drank from them'."
In her retirement, Legge continued to be academically active, attending conferences and continuing to undertake research.Bennett, Philip E. "Legge, (Mary) Dominica (1905–1986), French scholar and historian." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, 28 May 2015.
Legge died in Oxford on 10 December 1986.{{citation needed|date=July 2020}}
Selected works
- Anglo-Norman letters and petitions from All Souls. Ms. 182, Oxford 1941
- Le Roman de Balain. A prose romance of the thirteenth century With an introduction by Eugène Vinaver, Manchester 1942
- Anglo-Norman in the cloisters. The influence of the orders upon Anglo-Norman literature, Edinburgh 1950
- Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background (Oxford, 1963)
- with Ruth J. Dean) The Rule of St. Benedict. A Norman prose version, Oxford 1964
- The significance of Anglo-Norman. Inaugural lecture, Edinburgh 1969
- "William the Marshal and Arthur of Brittany", Historical Research, volume 55, 1982
References
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Category:British women linguists
Category:British women medievalists
Category:English literary historians
Category:People from Bayswater
Category:20th-century British women scientists
Category:Fellows of the British Academy
Category:Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America
Category:Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford