María Rosa Lida de Malkiel

María Rosa Lida de Malkiel (; November 7, 1910 – September 25, 1962), was an Argentine philologist. Notable as an Hispanist medievalist, she came to the United States on a Rockefeller Foundation program of study. Beginning in 1947, Lida de Malkiel lectured for many years in the US, including at Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, and Stanford. An advisor to the editorial boards of two professional journals, in the 1950s she was admitted to the Real Academia Española and the Academia Argentina de Letras.

Early life and education Born María Rosa Lida to a family of Jewish immigrants in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she had two older brothers: Emilio, who became a hematologist, and Raimundo, who became a philologist. Her brothers were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, an area now in Ukraine. As a child, she was raised in a family with a strong Jewish identity, who spoke Yiddish as their first language. She graduated from the Liceo Nacional de Señoritas Nº1 José Figueroa Alcorta in 1927. Her best friend during her high school years was Ana Rapaport.

Lida graduated from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Buenos Aires in 1932, winning a prize as best student. She completed her Doctorate in Philology in 1947, summa cum laude, at the Institute of Hispanic Languages and Literatures. Her dissertation was entitled Juan de Mena, poeta del Prerrenacimiento español (Juan de Mena, Poet of the Spanish Pre-Renaissance). Lida de Malkiel was elected to the Real Academia Española in 1953 by direct recommendation of Ramón Menéndez Pidal and the Academia Argentina de Letras in 1959. She served as an advisor on the editorial boards of Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, based in Mexico City (1947–1962) and Hispanic Review (1950-), based at the University of Pennsylvania. It collected the six lectures she delivered at the University of Illinois during her tenure as a Miller Visiting professor. She had long been interested in the Spanish classic The Celestina. Lida de Malkiel had worked for 15 years on her book about La Celestina; it was published three months after her death. ), edited with Yakov Malkiel 1974, Dido en la literatura española: Su retrato y defensa (Dido in Spanish Literature: Her Portrayal and Defense) 1978, Estudios sobre la literatura española del Siglo XV (Studies of the Spanish Literature of the 15th Century)

Legacy and honors 1955, Lida de Malkiel was awarded an honorary doctorate from Smith College. 1958, Lida de Malkiel was awarded the Achievement Award by the American Association of University Women.