Adela Marion Adam

Adela Marion Adam (10 June 1866 – 12 August 1944) was an English classicist, editor and Fellow of Girton College.

Career Adela Marion Adam taught Classics intermittently at Girton College and at Newnham College from c.1890 to at least 1920. She also returned to her former school, Bedford College in London, to teach twice a week after the death of her husband in 1907. During the First World War she delivered Classics lectures on behalf of the University of Cambridge. In 1912 she became Treasurer at Girton of the Frances Buss Fund, designed to help poorer students. Adam was a committed Platonist and published a study of Plato's morals, as well as several articles; some regard her most important work to be her 1918 article attacking A E Taylor and J Burnet's idea of Platonic Socrates.

Collaborator and editor Adam's husband James was also a Platonist and their collaborations supported his research. This is seen particularly clearly in the editions of his work that Adam produced after her husband's early death. Adam edited her husband's Gifford Lectures into a volume entitled Religious Teachers Of Greece, which she prefaced with a memoir of her husband. She also edited an additional volume of her husband's lectures after his death, entitled The Vitality of Platonism. These lectures illustrated his thoughts on Plato during what were to be the final years of his life. The Vitality of Platonism, and Other Essays (1911) [co-authored with J Adam] The Apology of Socrates (1914) [editor] 'The Mysticism of Greece' The Expository Times (1916) 'The Mysticism of Rome' The Expository Times (1916) 'Socrates, ‘Qvantvm Mvtatvs Ab Illo’' The Classical Quarterly (1918) Arthur Innes Adam, 1894-1916: A record founded on his letters (1920) 'The Value of Plato's Laws Today' Philosophical Review (1922)

Family life Adela Marion Kensington was born on 10 June 1866 in London. Adela was the youngest of ten children; as such she was almost named 'Decima'. They settled in Cambridge and had three children: Neil Kensington Adam (born 1891, chemist), Arthur Innes Adam (born 1894, classicist and soldier) and Barbara Adam (born 1897, sociologist and criminologist, later Baroness Wootton). After the death of her husband in 1907, Adam continued to bring up her family. Adam was on the committee of the Cambridge branch of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. In 1917 she was the lead signature on a letter to the local Cambridge press expressing disappointment that the local electoral reform committee continued to resist the enfranchisement of women. She died of a heart attack on 12 August 1944.