Jane Ellen Harrison

Jane Harrison was one of the founders of modern studies in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. She applied nineteenth-century archaeological discoveries to the interpretation of ancient Greek religion in ways that have become standard. In 1874 she went up to Newnham College to study Classics, and then studied archaeology at the British Museum under Sir Charles Newton, developing an expertise in Greek vase painting. She returned to Newnham in 1898 as a research fellow with very few teaching obligations (although she was a gifted teacher) – an arrangement renewed repeatedly in 1903, 1906, and 1910. The first in a string of major works, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion followed in 1903.