REEVES, Marjorie E(thel) 1905-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born July 17, 1905, in Bratton, Westbury, Wiltshire, England; died November 27, 2003, in Oxford, England. Historian, educator, and author. An expert on medieval mysticism, Reeves was an authority on the life of Abbot Joachim of Flora and was long associated as a teacher and administrator at St. Anne's College, Oxford. Educated at St. Hugh's College, Oxford, she majored in modern history and graduated in 1926. She then attended Westfield College, where she received her doctorate in 1931. Her early work included being an assistant mistress at Roan School in Greenwich during the late 1920s, and as a research fellow at Westfield College from 1929 to 1931. From 1931 to 1938, Reeves was a lecturer at St. Gabriel's Training College in Camberwell; she then joined the staff as a fellow and tutor in history at the Society of Oxford Home Students, which later became incorporated into Oxford as St. Anne's College; she served as its vice principal from 1951 to 1962, and from 1964 to 1967. As vice principal, Reeves was key to helping St. Anne's become part of Oxford. As a researcher and writer, she focused on three main areas: the medieval mysticism of Joachim of Flora, the philosophy of education and work, and the history of her family's home village of Wiltshire. About Joachim she published such important works as The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study of Joachimism (1969) and Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (1976). She was also the coauthor of Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth Century (1986; revised edition published in 2001 as Joachimof Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries) and Western Mediterranean Prophecy: The School of Joachim of Fiore and the Fourteenth-Century Breviloquium (1989). Her books on education include editing Eighteen Plus: Unity and Diversity in Higher Education (1965) and writing The Crisis in Higher Education: Competence, Delight, and the Common Good (1988) and Pursuing the Muses: Female Education and Nonconformist Culture, 1700-1900 (1997). Reeves combined her interests in history and improving education by writing a series of history books for schools called the "Then and There" series, which included a dozen books designed to spark young students' interest in history. Still pursuing her interest in medieval history and writing long after her retirement in 1974 from St. Anne's, she published her most recent book, The Prophetic Sense of History in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (1999). Reeves's many contributions to education and history led to many honors, among them a Medlicott Medal in 1993 and being named a Commander of the British Empire in 1996; she had also been a fellow of the British Academy since 1974.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Guardian (London, England), December 13, 2003, p. 27.

Independent (London, England), December 29, 2003, p. 16.

Times (London, England), December 14, 2003.