Kathleen Freeman

Kathleen Freeman (22 June 1897 – 21 February 1959) was a British classical scholar and author of detective novels. Her detective fiction was published under the pseudonym Mary Fitt. Freeman was a lecturer in Greek at the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, Cardiff, between 1919 and 1946.

Early life and education

Kathleen Freeman was born in Yardley, Birmingham, and was the daughter of a commercial traveller, Charles H. Freeman, and Catharine Freeman, née Mawdesley. By the 1911 census, the family had moved to an eight-room house at 86 Conway Road, Cardiff. Freeman's mother died in 1919, and her father died in 1932. She began her degree in 1915 and studied with Professor Gilbert Norwood. A 1922 picture of the faculty at University College shows 41 men and 10 women. Only one of these women, Ida Beata Saxby, had a doctorate (University of London, 1918).

Freeman is best known for her works The Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Companion to Diels, Fragmente Der Vorsokratiker (1946), and Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1947/48), a translation of and handbook to the fragments of Pre-Socratic philosophers collected by Diels.

During the Second World War Freeman delivered lectures on Greece for the Ministry of Information and in the National Scheme of Education for HM Forces in South Wales and Monmouthshire. Her publications Voices of Freedom (1943), What They Said at the Time: A Survey of the Causes of the Second World War (1945) and her work with the Philosophical Society of England, where she acted as Supervisor of Studies from 1948 to 1952 before becoming the Chairman in 1952, are further testimony to her desire to make Greek ideas accessible through translation. Freeman resigned from the university in 1946 in order to pursue her research and writing.

Fiction-writing career Freeman enjoyed success as a writer of fiction and wrote under the pseudonyms Mary Fitt (1936–60), Stuart Mary Wick (1948; 1950), Clare St. Donat (1950) and Caroline Cory (1956). In 1936, she began publishing crime fiction under the pseudonym Mary Fitt, writing 27 books and a number of short stories. In 1950, she became a member of the Detection Club. Her books were critically acclaimed at the time, although since her death many have been out of print. She also wrote twelve children's stories and T'other Miss Austen (1956), a study of Jane Austen.

In recent years, Freeman's work has been re-assessed, especially in the light of Welsh women and modernism. Her short stories have also been described as antecedents of the Kate North's queer stories, and, as of 2019, republication of some of her short stories was planned.

Personal life

From some time in the 1930s until her death, she lived with her girlfriend, Dr. Liliane Marie Catherine Clopet (1901–1987), a GP and author, at Lark's Rise, a house on Druidstone Road in St Mellons, now a district of Cardiff. Freeman's inscription includes a slight misspelling of Clopet's name, which has been thought by antiquarian bookseller Peter Harrington, to indicate that Freeman and Clopet were in the early stages of their relationship. 1941: It Has All Happened Before: What the Greeks Thought of their Nazis, London: F. Muller Ltd. OCLC 5290960 1943: Voices of Freedom, London: F. Muller Ltd. OCLC 912104035 1945: What They Said at the Time: A Survey of the Causes of the Second World War, London: F. Muller Ltd. OCLC 921002880 1946: The Pre-Socratic Philosophers; a companion to Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Oxford: Blackwell. 1946: The Murder of Herodes and Other Trials from the Athenian law courts, London, MacDonald. 1947: The Greek way: an Anthology. Translations from verse and prose, London, MacDonald. 1947/48: Ancilla to the pre-Socratic philosophers: a complete translation of the fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., Blackwell and Harvard University Press. 1948: The Philoctetes of Sophocles, a modern version, London: Muller. 1950: Greek city-states, London, Macdonald; New York: W. W. Norton. 1952: God, Man and State. Greek concepts, London: Macdonald. 1954: The Paths of Justice, London: Lutterworth Press. 1954: Everyday things in Ancient Greece, London, Batsford. A one-volume revision of Everyday Things in Homeric Greece, Everyday Things in Archaic Greece, and Everyday Things in Classical Greece by C. H. Quennell and Marjorie Quennell. 1929–32. 1954: The Sophists. Translation of Mario Untersteiner, I sofisti, Oxford: Blackwell.

Selected fictional publications

1926: The Intruder and Other Stories, London: Jonathan Cape. OCLC 560414633 1926: Martin Hanner. A Comedy, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co. OCLC 560414667 1936: Three Sisters Flew Home, London: Nicholson & Watson. 1937: The Three Hunting Horns, London: Nicholson & Watson. 1938: Expected Death, London: Nicholson & Watson. 1941: Death on Herons' Mere, London: Michael Joseph. 1941: Aftermath of Murder, New York: Doubleday. 1946: Death and the Pleasant Voices, London: Michael Joseph. 1948: And Where's Mr Bellamy?, London: Hutchinson. 1941: Death and Mary Dazill, London: Michael Joseph. 1950: Pity for Pamela, London: Macdonald & Co. 1952: Clues to Christabel, London: Pan Books. 1953: The Night-Watchman's Friend London: Macdonald & Co. 1959: Mizmaze, London: Michael Joseph.