Edith Hamilton Accomplishments

Kadence Esparza
Mrs. Cox
English
14 May 2018
Edith Hamilton
Have you ever wondered how it felt to be recognized for writing a book or having many awards? Well Edith Hamilton knows all about that. Edith Hamilton was an amazing person. What is interesting about her was her attitude. She was a very determined woman. Three incredible things about Edith Hamilton, are her stages of life, her amazing career, and her many accomplishments.
Edith Hamilton was born of American parents in Dresden, Germany, and grew up in Indiana (“Hamilton Front”). Hamilton, the eldest of five children from an exceptionally gifted intellectual family, was raised on a family estate with many servants, many relatives, and no need for outsiders. She was withdrawn, intense, moody, and somewhat depressive. However, she was also a gifted storyteller, and had a phenomenal memory (“Edith Hamilton”). She learned French at an early age from her mother and German from servants. Her father
taught her Latin at the age of seven and Greek at eight (“Edith Hamilton”). At the age of sixteen, Hamilton attended school for the first time at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut (“Edith Hamilton”). About this experience Hamilton stated “We weren’t taught anything” (“Edith Hamilton”). When Hamilton arrived at Bryn Mawr in the autumn of 1896 at the age of twenty-nine, she was the first headmistress. Hamilton remembered, “I was very young and very ignorant when i first came to Baltimore and, I may say, very, very, frightened. I remember vividly saying to myself as I traveled down here, ‘If I were to be put in charge of running this train, I could hardly know less how to do it than I know how to run the Bryn Mawr School’” (“Edith Hamilton”). In 1957, at the age of ninety, Hamilton was invited to Athens where she was given the Gold Cross of the Legion of Benefaction by King Paul of Greece, and made an honorary citizen of Athens (“Edith Hamilton”). She passed away peacefully on May 31, 1963, in Washington, D.C. (“Edith Hamilton”).
Edith Hamilton had an amazing career, she first studied at the University of Leipzig, where Hamilton was very disappointed in the sterility of the Greek and Roman courses (“Edith Hamilton”).
She majored in classics and finished in two years with a Masters of Arts degree in 1894 (“Edith Hamilton”). Hamilton decided to attend Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, even though Miss Porter did not believe in college for women, and her family objected strenuously. It was necessary for Hamilton to study subjects not taught at Miss Porter’s School, such as trigonometry, which Hamilton taught herself from a book, in order to pass the college entrance examination (“Edith Hamilton”). The dean of Bryn Mawr College, Miss M. Carey Thomas, offered her a position as headmistress of the Bryn Mawr Preparatory School in Baltimore, Maryland (“Edith Hamilton”). The articles she wrote for Theatre Art Monthly were remade into a book, The Greek Way, published in 1930, when she was 63 years old (“Edith
Hamilton”).
Another interesting part of Edith’s life was her accomplishments. Hamilton’s Mythology has been a bestseller and has sold millions of copies throughout the world (“Edith Hamilton”). Hamilton was headmistress of Bryn Mawr Preparatory School of approximately 400 students until 1922. She loved teaching, but too rarely had the opportunity. She apparently was an excellent teacher, able to inspire students with her love of learning (“Edith Hamilton”). She was awarded the European Fellowship given to the most outstanding woman in the graduating class to enable her to study for a year in any foreign country (“Edith Hamilton”). Between 1949 and 1962, Hamilton was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Rochester (1949), the University of Pennsylvania (1953), Yale University (1959), and Goucher College (1962) (“Edith Hamilton”). In 1955, she was elected a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 1957 became member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (“Edith Hamilton”). “She regarded as the highpoint of her life a 1957 ceremony in which King Paul of Greece named her an honorary citizen of Athens” (“Hamilton Back”). “In 1958, she was awarded the Constance Lindsay Skinner Award for Literature” (“Edith Hamilton”).
Edith Hamilton (1867-1963) was an excellent teacher, scholar, and writer. She was a gifted storyteller and had a phenomenal memory. Starting at the age of sixty-three, Hamilton publishes a number of acclaimed books on Greek and Roman culture, was made an honorary citizen of Athens, and was awarded several honorary doctorates (“Edith Hamilton”). Edith Hamilton had fascinating information about her, but the three most interesting was her stages of life, her amazing career, and her many accomplishments. My hope is that those who do not know the classics will gain in this way not only a knowledge of the myths, but some little idea of what the writers were like who told them (“Hamilton Preface”).

Works Cited
"Edith, Hamilton. " Encyclopedia of World Biography, vol. 22, Gale, 2002. Research in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1631007961/MSIC?u=j083901&sid=MSIC&xid=ce1c7899. Accessed 14 May 2018.
Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group Inc, 2017. Print.