P. E. Easterling

Patricia Elizabeth Easterling, FBA (née Fairfax; born 11 March 1934) is an English classical scholar, recognised as a particular expert on the work of Sophocles. She was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2001. She was the 36th person and the first woman to hold the prestigious post.

Life and career

Born in Blackburn, Easterling attended Witton Park High School before graduating with first class honours and distinction in Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge in 1955. After an initial spell lecturing at the University of Manchester (1957–58), Easterling taught within the Cambridge Classics Faculty as a Fellow of Newnham College until 1987 when she took up the position of Professor of Greek at University College London.

In 1994 she returned to Cambridge and Newnham as the 36th Regius Professor of Greek, the first (and so far only) woman to hold that post since its endowment by Henry VIII. On retirement in 2001 she became an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College.

In 1998 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

On January 22, 2000 Easterling received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Languages at Uppsala University, Sweden^[1]

Academic interests

Easterling works mainly on Greek literature, particularly tragedy; she also studies the survival and reception of ancient drama.

She has been a General Editor of the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series since its foundation over thirty years ago, and has published an edition within this series of Sophocles’ Trachiniae (1982).

Her most recent book is Greek and Roman Actors (Cambridge 2002), co-edited with Edith Hall. She is currently writing a commentary on Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus.

Publications

Books

• Sophocles: Trachiniae, edited, Cambridge, 1982
• Greek Religion and Society, edited with J V Muir, 1984
• The Cambridge History of Classical Literature, General editor with E J Kenney
• The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, Editor, 1997
• Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession, edited with Edith Hall, 2002

Articles

• Constructing the Heroic in Christopher Pelling, Greek Tragedy and the Historian, Oxford, 1997: 21-37
• The Infanticide in Euripides' Medea, Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977): 177-191

References

• Cambridge University database

External links

• Profile of P E Easterling
• Picture of P. E. Easterling
• Homer, Tragedy and Beyond: Essays in honour of P. E. Easterling, New Hellenic Society 1991
• Sophocles and the Greek Tragic Tradition: Essays in honour of P. E. Easterling on her 75th birthday. Cambridge University Press 2009 ISBN 978-0-521-88785-4
• British Academy fellowship entry