Dorothy De Navarro

Dorothy De Navarro (1901–1987) was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, who specialised in Anglo Saxon literature.

Agnes Dorothy Mackenzie Hoare (known as Dorothy Hoare until her marriage, and thereafter Dorothy De Navarro) was born on 31 July 1901 in Inverness, Scotland. She was the daughter of a draper and his wife. She was educated at Inverness Royal Academy and took her B.A. at Aberdeen University with First Class Honours in English and a Gold Medal. She took her M.A. in 1923.^[1]

Hoare earned a Carnegie Fellowship from Aberdeen to continue her studies at the University of Cambridge from 1926-1929, residing in Newnham College. She took her PhD from Cambridge in 1929.^[1]

Career

Hoare worked as an Assistant Lecturer at Cambridge from 1930–1932, and was promoted to Lecturer of English from 1932–1949. She held positions at Newnham including member of council 1935–1941, 1951–1952 and Secretary 1936–1941. She was an Associate Fellow of Newnham from 1950–1952. She was a member of the faculty boards of English, Archaeology and Anthropology from 1936–1956.^[1] She lectured in Anglo Saxon literature.

Published works

Hoare published The Works of Morris and Yeats on relation to early Saga literature (1937), Some studies in the Modern Novel (1938), an Introduction to Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1938), she edited with her husband, A.C. Jessup's The Lady of the Winding Stair and other poems (1957) and edited her brother B.G. Hoare's Collection of Poems (1950). She also published in journals.

Hoare married Jose Maria “Toty” de Navarro in 1940, a former Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and lecturer in Archaeology.^[2] They had one child, Michael de Navarro.

Dorothy De Navarro met Gertrude Caton-Thompson, a famed archaeologist while both resided at Cambridge. They became good friends, and shared a house while at Cambridge, along with Dorothy’s husband “Toty”. After De Navarro retired from teaching, Caton-Thompson moved with the De Navarro family to their home in Broadway, Worcestershire in 1956, which would become their shared home until their respective deaths.^[2] It would become a popular destination for writers and musicians to visit, as it had been during Toty De Navarro's youth when his mother, Mary Anderson had first lived there.^[2]

Legacy

The Broadway Trust was established in 1963, to preserve the village of Broadway in the Cotswolds where the De Navarro home was located. Their home, Court Farm remains a significant cultural landmark, containing a rare preserved Edwardian garden.^[3]

Dorothy De Navarro died in Broadway, Worcestershire in 1987 and was survived by her son, Michael.

References