‘The passion of hazard’: women at the British School at Athens before the First World War

Abstract

From the opening of the British School at Athens in 1886 to the outbreak of the First World War, women were regularly admitted as Students. British women were actively engaged in research in Greece, although they were not permitted to join official School excavations until the 1911 campaign at Phylakopi on the island of Melos. This contrasts with the active field research of American women like Harriet Boyd Hawes. Most of the British women had been educated at either Girton College or Newnham College, Cambridge, where they had been influenced by Katharine Jex-Blake and Jane Harrison. For several, notably Hilda Lorimer, Gisela Richter and Eugenie Strong, their residence in Athens was to make a significant contribution to their careers and subsequent study of antiquity.