Margaret W. Pepperdene

Margaret Jane Williams Pepperdene ( Williams; December 25, 1919 – November 20, 2009) was an American academic of English literature. A 1962 Guggenheim Fellow, she was the inaugural Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English at Agnes Scott College and later taught English at The Paideia School. Biography Pepperdene was born on December 25, 1919 in Vicksburg, Mississippi. After spending a year at the Gulf Park College for Women (1937-1948), she obtained her Bachelor of Science degree from Louisiana State University in 1941. they remained married until their divorce in 1948. she did graduate studies at Vanderbilt University, where she worked as a teaching fellow (1948-1950) and assistant instructor (1951-1952) and obtained her Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in 1948 and 1953, respectively. She was an American Association of University Women Martha Catching Enochs Fellow at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (1954-1955). She was also chair of the English department, as well as the Writers' Festival director. Pepperdene was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to research Christianity in Beowulf. She was editor of That Subtile Wreath, a 1974 volume of lectures for John Donne's 400th birthday as part of Agnes Scott's James Ross McCain Lecture Series. She won the 1987 Georgia Humanities Council Governor's Award.

Pepperdene was reportedly close to alumni from Agnes Scott and Paideia even after they graduated, as well as poets James Dickey, Robert Frost, and Eudora Welty.