M. C. Bradbrook

M. C. Bradbrook

Muriel Clara Bradbrook (1909 – 11 June 1993) was a British literary scholar and authority on Shakespeare. She was Professor of English at the University of Cambridge, and Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge.

Muriel Bradbrook was the eldest child of Samuel Bradbrook, superintendent of HM water guard, and his wife, Annie Wilson, née Harvey. She was educated at Hutcheson’s Girls’ School, Glasgow, and Oldershaw High School, Wallasey. She went to Girton College and read English at University of Cambridge between 1927 and 1930, achieving First Class honours in both parts of the Cambridge Tripos. She remained at Girton College as a Carlisle Scholar and subsequently as an Ottilie Hancock Research Fellow between 1930 and 1935, obtaining her PhD in 1933. She spent a year at University of Oxford before returning to Girton College as Lecturer in English and Fellow in 1936. She remained in Cambridge apart from a period working in London for the Board of Trade during the Second World War. By that time she had already published five major works of literary criticism and throughout the 1950s and 60s she continued to publish on Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. In all, she wrote some seventeen books, including works on Ibsen, Lowry and Conrad. She was appointed a University Lecturer by University of Cambridge in 1948, a Reader in 1962, and Professor of English in 1965 (the first female professor in the Faculty of English). She held visiting professorships at numerous universities, including Santa Cruz, Tokyo, and Rhodes, South Africa, and received honorary degrees from many more. During her period of office as Mistress, Girton College celebrated its centenary (for which she wrote a history, That Infidel Place ) and the decision was taken to admit men. She retired in 1976 and became a Life Fellow of Girton College.