Florence Stawell

Florence Stawell
Born	(1869-05-02)May 2, 1869
Died	9 June 1936(1936-06-09) (aged 67)
Occupation	syllabic writer

Florence Melian Stawell (2 May 1869 – 9 June 1936) was a classical scholar.^[1]

Career

Florence Melian Stawell, youngest daughter of Sir William Foster Stawell, was born at Melbourne on 2 May 1869. She was named for the Melians, ancient Greek idealists from Melos of whom Thucydides had written, and was known as Melian. (Melian was a given name in the family since Melian Allin married Jonas Stawell at Cork in 1734. The name had descended through the female line of the Allin, Twogood and Deane families from Melian Wallis who married Matthew Deane of Bristol in 1647.)

Newspaper photograph and Cambridge Classical Tripos results of Florence Stawell, 1892.

Stawell attended Trinity College, the University of Melbourne, where she was greatly influenced by the Warden, Dr Alexander Leeper.^[2]

In 1911, she offered an interpretation of the Phaistos Disc as Homeric Greek, syllabic writing.

She died on 9 June 1936.

Stawell was a member of the Society for Psychical Research.^[3]

References

1. Sluga, Glenda (2021), Rietzler, Katharina; Owens, Patricia (eds.), "From F. Melian Stawell to E. Greene Balch: International and Internationalist Thinking at the Gender Margins, 1919–1947", Women's International Thought: A New History, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 223–243, doi:10.1017/9781108859684.015, hdl:2123/25569, ISBN 978-1-108-49469-4, S2CID 234251823, retrieved 6 March 2021
2. Donald Markwell, "Melian Stawell and Collegiate Education", A large and liberal education': higher education for the 21st century, Australian Scholarly Publishing & Trinity College, University of Melbourne, 2007, pp. 105–8
3. Woolf, Virginia; Bell, Anne Olivier. The Diary of Virginia Woolf: 1915-1919. Hogarth Press. p. 190

• Serle, Percival (1949). "Stawell, Florence". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.

External links

• K. J. McKay, 'Stawell, Florence Melian (1869 – 1936)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 12, Melbourne University Pressю, 1990, pp. 55–56.