Abstract
WE regret to record the death of Bertha Surtees Newall, more widely known under her maiden name of Phillpotts, which took place at Cambridge on Jan. 21, at the age of fifty-four years. Miss Phillpotts was the daughter of James Surtees Phillpotts, for many years headmaster of Bedford Grammar School. She entered Girton as a student, and took first-class honours in the Medieval and Modern Languages Tripos in 1901. In addition to the course laid down for her schools, she took up with enthusiasm the study of the Scandinavian languages under Mr. Eirikr Magnêsson. Her College appointed her Pfeiffer student and College librarian, but she resigned in 1910 to study archæology, acting as secretary to the late Baron A. von Hügel. In 1913 she published her first book, “Kindred and Clan”, and was appointed the first holder of the Lady Carlisle fellowship at Somerville College, Oxford. During the War she served as private secretary to the British Minister at Stockholm, perfecting her knowledge of Scandinavian languages and visiting Iceland six times. In 1919 she returned to take up an appointment at West-field College in the University of London. Here she published her second and best-known book, “The Elder Edda and the Ancient Scandinavian Drama”, of which the merit was immediately recognised.
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Dame Bertha Newall (née Phillpotts), D.B.E. Nature 129, 159 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129159a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129159a0