Helen Jane Waddell (31 May 1889 – 5 March 1965) was an Irish poet, scholar, theological novelist, translator, publisher's reader and playwright. She was a recipient of the Benson Medal. A prize-winning biography of her by the Benedictine nun Dame Felicitas Corrigan was published in 1986, which won the James Tait Black Award.

Biography
She was born in Tokyo, the tenth and youngest child of Hugh Waddell, a Presbyterian minister and missionary in Tokyo. She spent the first eleven years of her life in Japan before returning to Belfast with her father and step-mother (her mother, Jane Martin, had died after returning to Ireland when Helen was a baby, and Hugh Waddell remarried before taking his four younger chidlren and new wife back to Japan). When Hugh Waddell died he left his youngest children in the care of their stepmother. Following the marriage of her elder sister Meg, Helen remained living at home with Mrs Waddell, who ensured that Helen led a restricted social life, in line with Presbyterian thinking, for the rest of her schooldays and in her student career when she was studying for her degree, objecting to Helen making visits or taking part in her university's social life. Helen's older brothers and family friends attempted to ensure that Helen had the funds to dress herself appropriately for her age and situation. Helen became Mrs Waddell's carer in her later years when her stepmother's health was deteriorating. The Corrigan biography makes it clear that Mrs Waddell struggled with alcoholism and Helen had to bear the physical work of managing her while shielding the family from the social stigma current at the time.

Throughout this time Helen had become one of the most brilliant literary scholars of her generation, and in 1913 she published a book of translations of Chinese poetry, Lyrics from the Chinese (1913) (Constable), the year she graduated from university. Her mentors were Professor George Saintsbury and Professor Gregory Smith at Belfast.

Waddell was educated at Victoria College for Girls and Queen's University Belfast, where she studied under Professor Gregory Smith. It was at this time that she met her life-long friend, Maude Clarke. After her stepmother's death Helen was able to choose her own course in life and at the age of 31, in 1920, she moved to Oxford to read for a BLitt. Helen enrolled at Somerville College, Oxford, to study for her doctorate. A travelling scholarship from Lady Margaret Hall in 1923 allowed her to conduct research in Paris. She did not submit her thesis for the DPhil, but published her work as The Wandering Scholars, which brought her immediate critical and popular acclaim. She began work at Constable, her publisher, initially as a reader, and later on a retainer so that they would have first refusal on her future books. 

Helen Waddell is best known for bringing to light the history of the medieval goliards in her 1927 book The Wandering Scholars, and translating their Latin poetry in the companion volume Medieval Latin Lyrics. A second anthology, More Latin Lyrics, was compiled in the 1940s but not published until after her death. Her other works range widely in subject matter. For example, she also wrote plays. Her first play was The Spoiled Buddha, which was performed at the Opera House, Belfast, by the Ulster Literary Society. Her The Abbe Prevost was staged in 1935. Her historical novel Peter Abelard was published in 1933. It was critically well received and became a bestseller.

She also wrote many articles for the Evening Standard, the Manchester Guardian and The Nation, and did lecturing and broadcasting.

Waddell held the role of assistant editor of The Nineteenth Century magazine during the Second World War. Among her circle of friends in London, where she was vice-president of the Irish Literary Society, were W. B. Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay, Max Beerbohm and George William Russell.  Her personal and professional friendship with Siegfried Sassoon apparently made the latter's wife suspicious. Although she never married, she had close relationships with several older men, including her publisher, Otto Kyllmann of Constable.

Waddell received honorary degrees from the universities of Columbia, Belfast, Durham and St. Andrews and won the Benson Medal of the Royal Society of Literature.

As the daughter of a Presbyterian minister and missionary, Helen Wadell's religious faith was profound, and she applied her skills in translating Latin theological writing and poetry with the devotion of a critical believer. The Corrigan biography lays great stress on the importance of Helen's faith in influencing the choices she made in her life, and the standards for how she chose to live.

A serious debilitating neurological disease put an end to her writing career in 1950. She died in London in 1965 and was buried in Magherally churchyard, County Down, Northern Ireland.

Representative works

Novels
 Peter Abelard (1933)

Plays
The Spoiled Buddha (performed 1915; London: T. Fisher Unwin 1919)
The Abbé Prévost (London: Constable 1933).

Other
 Lyrics from the Chinese (1913)
 The Wandering Scholars (1927)
 Medieval Latin Lyrics (1929)
 Beasts and Saints (1934)
 The Desert Fathers (1936)
 For Better Factory Laws (1937) Pamphlet
 Poetry in the Dark Ages (1947) "The eighth W.P.Ker Memorial Lecture delivered in the University of Glasgow, 28th October, 1947" (lecture published by Jackson, Son & Company, Publishers to the University, 1948)
 Stories from Holy Writ (1949)
 More Latin Lyrics: From Virgil to Milton (posthumous, edited by Dame Felicitas Corrigan, 1976)
 Between Two Eternities (1993) (posthumous, edited by Dame Felicitas Corrigan.)

References

Further reading

External links 
 Helen Waddell at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography  
 Short biography and "blue plaque" at the Ulster History Circle (archived 2011-06-05)
 Famous Faces from Belfast at Belfast Safaris – short biographies of Waddell and others (archived 2006-10-11)
 
 
 Helen Waddell: Poems at Black Cat Poems
 Helen Waddell entry in the Banbridge District Online by Banbridge District Council
 Helen Waddell papers at the Genesis Project in the UK
 
 Helen Waddell Papers at Queen's University Belfast
 

1889 births
1965 deaths
British medievalists
Women medievalists
Irish medievalists
Women poets from Northern Ireland
20th-century poets from Northern Ireland
20th-century British women writers
Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America
Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
Women historians from Northern Ireland
People educated at Victoria College, Belfast
Scholars and academics from Belfast