Jane Harrison Collection

Hope Mirrlees became a student of Jane Harrison in 1910, from whom she took Greek, and although she was at Newnham until 1913, she did not sit the Tripos exams. She went on to become a novelist and biographer (though not of JEH).

Mirrlees accompanied Harrison when she went to Paris in 1915 to see her heart doctor. Nearby was the Ecole des Langues Orientales, where they both enrolled in Russian classes. By the time she returned to Cambridge in June 1916, Harrison was fluent in Russian, which from then on became the focus of her academic studies. Harrison and Mirrlees continued to travel together and see each other in Cambridge until 1922, when, on her retirement from Newnham College, they moved to Paris and lived together for the remainder of Harrison's life. There they furthered their knowledge of Russian and made several Russian friends, including Prince Mirsky, in collaboration with whom they translated two books: "The Life of the Archpriest Avvakum" (1924) and "The Book of the Bear" (1926). They returned to London in the spring of 1926 and set up home in Mecklenburgh Street, where Harrison died on 15 April 1928.

The Mirrlees papers contain letters written in Russian to Harrison and Mirrlees (see also 1/5/3: JEH to Mirsky); and letters to Mirrlees from friends after Harrison's death. Important is a many page notebook in which Hope Mirrlees recorded memories of JEH by friends, colleagues, and members of her family; also, preliminary drafts of a biography on large folios of jotting paper. In addition, she collected lecture lists and other printed ephemera relating to Harrison.

All the letters written by Harrison to Mirrlees are in 1/3. The remainder of the Mirrlees papers have been arranged as follows: 4/1 correspondence; 4/2 JEH printed matter; 4/3 biography research.