Le morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory & Its Sources

by Vida Dutton Scudder

Original navy blue cloth with gilt lettering at spine and front cover. Engraved frontispiece "A Knightly Combat in the Fifteenth Century" depicting jousting. (Julia) Vida Dutton Scudder (1861 - 1954) was an American scholar, educator, and welfare activist in the social gospel movement. From 1919 until her death in 1954, Scudder was in a committed lesbian relationship with Florence Converse with whom she lived at Wellesley. The daughter of missionaries, Scudder was born in India, whence she and her mother returned to Boston upon the death of her father in 1861. After graduating from Smith College, she and Clara French were the first American women admitted to the graduate program at Oxford University. While in England she was influenced by York Powell, John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoi and George Bernard Shaw. Scudder returned to Boston and began teaching English literature at Wellesley College in 1887, becoming a full professor by 1910. From the beginning of her professional career she was actively involved in social and labor causes. Scudder helped organize the Federal Labor Union, the Women's Trade Union League, and Denison House, one of the earliest settlement houses. In 1911 Scudder co-founded the Episcopal Church Socialist League and joined the Socialist Party, and in 1919 she founded the Church League for Industrial Democracy. In the 1920s Scudder embraced pacifism and joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1923. Scudder retired from Wellesley in 1927 and received the title of professor emeritus. She became the first dean of the Summer School of Christian Ethics in 1930 at Wellesley and lectured often at the New School for Social Research in New York.

430 pages, Hardcover

First published December 26, 2009

About the author

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vida_Dut...