North American Scholar

CLAFLIN, Edith Frances

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  • Date of Birth (YYYY-MM-DD): 1875-10-06
  • Born City: Quincy
  • Born State/Country: MA
  • Parents: Frederick Allan & Narcissa Adelaide Avery C.
  • Date of Death (YYYY-MM-DD): 1953-03-05
  • Death City: New York
  • Death State/Country: NY
  • Education:

    A.B. Radcliffe, 1897; Garrett Fellow, ASCSA, 1899-1900; A.M. & Ph.D. Bryn Mawr, 1904.
  • Professional Experience:

    Instr. Gk. & Lat. Prospect Hill Sch. (Greenfield, MA), 1901-7; head, class, dept. Monticello Seminary (Godfrey, IL), 1906-13; Gk. & Lat. tchr. Laurel Sch. (Cleveland, OH), 1914-6; head dept. Gk. Rosemary Hall Acad. (Greenwich, CT), 1916-33; lctr. Lat. & Gk. Barnard, 1936-45; spec. lctr. Columbia, 1945-53.
  • Dissertation:

    “The Syntax of the Boeotian Dialect Inscriptions" (Bryn Mawr, 1904); printed (Baltimore, 1905).
  • Publications:

    “On a Method in Virgil,” CJ 5 (1909-10) 224-5; “Ni mea cura resistat, Aeneid ii, 599,” CJ 6 (1910-1) 305-7; “Latinisms in Shakespeare's Diction,” CJ 16 (1920-1) 346-59; “Experiments in a Two-Year Greek Course,” CJ 19 (1923-4) 534-44; “On Translating Latin,” CJ 20 (1924-5) 104-12; “Teaching the Comprehension of Latin,” CJ 22 (1926-7) 276-82; “'The Nature of the Latin Passive in the Light of Recent Discoveries,” AJP 48 (1927) 157-75; “Lingua Viva,” CJ 37 (1941-2) 7-16; “Videor as a Deponent in Plautus,” AJP 64 (1943) 71-9; “Teaching the Art of Reading Latin,” CJ 39 (1943-4) 130-6; “The Middle Voice in the De Senectute,” AJP 67 (1946) 193-221.
  • Notes:

    Edith Claflin taught young women for 17 years at Rosemary Hall and saw a number of her students pursue careers in classics. While maintaining a rigorous teaching schedule throughout her career, she managed to publish regularly in AJP and CJ. She held that Latin is a living language not different from Spanish, French, and Italian; it is essentially the same language. She wrote letters to the New York Times on topics ranging from world affairs to the sighting and habits of birds, her principal hobby.
  • Sources:

    Bernard Bloch, Language 29 (1953) 219-20; DAS 1951:160; NYTimes (8 Mar. 1953) 90; Sch. & Soc. 77 (1953) 174; WomWWA 14:178.
  • Author: Ward W. Briggs, Jr.