Alpha and Omega
Description
From Marginalian Editions, a remarkable essay collection by the iconoclastic historian Jane Ellen Harrison, hero to generations of writers from Virginia Woolf to Mary Beard, exploring seemingly opposing forces from magic and theology to peace and patriotism.
Published at the outset of World War I, the essay collection Alpha and Omega was the capstone of the remarkable career of Jane Ellen Harrison, the iconoclastic classics scholar who became legendary as the first woman paid professional academic-who emanated fearlessness, sparkling wit, and powers of insight that reshaped our understanding of ancient Greek culture. But her far-ranging mind did not limit itself to the ancients: throughout her career, Harrison gave wildly popular lectures on topics as varied as paganism, evolution, modern art, and women's suffrage.
As Harrison notes in the lead essay of the collection, humorously titled "Crabbed Age and Youth," there is often great friction between the young and the old, but this friction can, "if rightly understood and considerately handled on both sides, take the form of mutual stimulus and attraction." This balancing of seemingly irreconcilable antagonists-of alpha and omega-threads its way through the essays collected here in ways that feel just as fresh, surprising, and brilliant as when they were written, inviting us to think about think about the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts of our own age in new way.
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Jane Ellen Harrison (1850-1928) was born and raised in Yorkshire, England, the daughter of a prosperous timber broker; her mother died soon after she was born. Educated at home as a child, Harrison enrolled in 1874 in the newly established Newnham College for women, at Cambridge University, where she later taught. In 1903 Harrison published her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, followed in 1912 by Themis, works that synthesized new developments in archaeology and anthropology and helped revolutionize the study of ancient Greek civilization. A popular lecturer whose articles enjoyed a wide readership, Harrison retired from teaching in 1922 and spent her last years in Paris with her "spiritual daughter," the poet Hope Mirrlees.
