Occupation academic, philologist Died 2001 Name Ida Gordon | Subject Philology Nationality British | |
John eyzen cyril niccolai ida gordon les beaux les laids 2010
Ida Lilian Gordon (born Wakefield 1907, died Rosemarkie 2001) was a British academic, specialising in Medieval English and Old Norse. She took her BA in English at Leeds University from 1925–28, and completed her PhD there in 1930: 'A typographical study of the sagas of the Vestfirðir: Gull-Þórissaga, Gíslasaga, Hávarðarsaga, Fóstbrœðrasaga and of their traditions'. In 1930, she married E. V. Gordon, Leeds's Professor of English Language, with whom she had four children (the eldest of whom, Bridget Mackenzie, went on to lecture in Old Norse at Glasgow University). J. R. R. Tolkien composed the couple a long Old English praise-poem in the Old Norse drottkvætt-metre, entitled Brýdleop, as a wedding present.
Ida Gordon moved with her husband to Manchester on his appointment as Smith Professor of English Language and Germanic Philology at the University of Manchester. On his death in 1938, and with four children under 7 to support, she took on some of his teaching duties, working as a Lecturer until 1960, when she was promoted to Senior Lecturer. She retired in 1968. She visited Iceland twice, and in 1970 was a visiting professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.
Her works include:
In 2014, the estate of Ida's eldest daughter Bridget Mackenzie sold a collection of letters written variously to Ida and to her husband by J. R. R. Tolkien to the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds. Mackenzie passed Ida and Eric Gordon's books to St Andrews University Library.