E. S. Drower
Ethel Stefana Drower | |
|---|---|
| Born | Ethel May Stefana Stevens 1 December 1879 |
| Died | 27 January 1972 (aged 92) |
| Citizenship | British |
| Spouse | Sir Edwin Drower |
| Children | Margaret Stefana Drower, William Mortimer Drower, Denys Drower |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Mandaic studies, cultural anthropology, novelist |
| Part of a series on |
| Mandaeism |
|---|
 |
| Religion portal |
Ethel, Lady Drower (cultural anthropologist, orientalist and novelist who studied the Middle East and its cultures.[2] She was and is still considered one of the primary specialists on the Mandaeans, and was the dedicated collector of Mandaean manuscripts.[3]
Biography
The daughter of a clergyman, in 1906, she was working for
Curtis Brown, a London literary agency when she signed Arthur Ransome to write Bohemia in London.[citation needed
]
In 1911, she married Edwin Drower and after his knighthood became Lady Drower. As E. S. Stevens, she wrote a series of romantic novels for Mills & Boon and other publishers. In 1921, she accompanied her husband to Iraq where Sir Edwin Drower was adviser to the Justice Minister from 1921 to 1947.[2] Among her grandchildren was the campaigning journalist Roly Drower.
Her works include the comprehensive description and display of the last practising gnostic
Yezidis),[4] editions of unique manuscripts such as astronomical divinations (omen) (The Book of the Zodiac) and magical texts (A Book of Black Magic;[5] A Phylactery for Rue),[6] and relevant translations of Mandaean religious works such as The Haran Gawaita and the Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa and The Coronation of the Great Šišlam.[2] Drower's final major work titled Mass and Masiqta or Messiah, Mass and Masiqta remains unpublished to this day, and it is unclear if the full manuscript exists.[7]
Before her scholarly activity, "Already under her maiden name of Ethel Stefana Stevens, Lady Drower had been inspired by the Orient. Between 1909 and 1927, she published 13 novels, and she was the author of two delectable books of travel."[8][2]
Ethel, Lady Drower died on 27 January 1972, aged 92. She was survived by her children, including daughter, Margaret "Peggy" Hackforth-Jones, and other family members.[9]
Awards and honors
Drower received several honours for her scholarly contributions:
- honorary Oxford University
- honorary DD from Uppsala University
- honorary fellow of the London University
- the Lidzbarski gold medal for her work on the Mandaeans and their literary transmission on 1 October 1964[10][2]
Drower Collection
The Drower Collection (DC), held at the
Oxford University, is the most extensive collection of Mandaean manuscripts. The collection consists of 55 manuscripts, many of which Drower had obtained through the Mandaean priest Sheikh Negm bar Zahroon.[11]
Drower donated MSS. Drower 1-53 to the
The Coronation of the Great Šišlam, was given to the library by Lady Drower in 1961. MS. Drower 55, Lady Drower's personal notebook, was added in 1986.[1]
After her death, some of Drower's private notebooks were obtained by Rudolf Macúch. These notebooks are not part of the Bodleian Library's Drower Collection.[9]
MS. DC 2, which was copied by
Classical Mandaic: ࡊࡋࡉࡋࡀ ࡐࡕ ࡔࡅࡔࡉࡀࡍ, lit. 'Wreath, daughter of Susan'), as her middle name Stefana means 'wreath' in Greek. MS. DC 26, a manuscript copied by copied by Sheikh Faraj for Drower in 1936, contains two qmahas (exorcisms). MS. DC 26 is dedicated to Drower's daughter, Margaret ("Peggy"), who is given the Mandaean baptismal name Marganita pt Klila ("Pearl, daughter of Wreath") in the text.[9]
Letters
In 2012,
Samuel H. Hooke, and Franz Rosenthal.[12]
Bibliography
Works as E. S. Stevens
- The Veil: A Romance of Tunis, New York, F.A. Stokes, 1909.
- The Mountain of God, London, Mills & Boon, 1911.
- Two works reviewing the
- The Long Engagement, New York, Hodder & Stoughton, 1912.
- The Lure, New York, John Lane, 1912.
- Sarah Eden, London, Mills & Boon, 1914.
- Allward, London, Mills & Boon, 1915.
- "--And What Happened", London, Mills & Boon, 1916.
- The Safety Candle, London, Cassell and Company, 1917.
- Magdalene: A Study in Methods, London, Cassell, 1919.
- By Tigris and Euphrates, London, Hurst & Blackett, 1923.
- Sophy: A Tale of Baghdad, London, Hurst & Blackett, 1924.
- Cedars, Saints and Sinners in Syria, London, Hurst & Blackett, 1926.
- The Losing Game, London, Hurst & Blackett, 1926.
- Garden of Flames, New York, F.A. Stokes, 1927.
- Ishtar, London, Hurst & Blackett, 1927.
- Folk-Tales of Iraq, set down and translated from the vernacular by E. S. Stevens, New York, B. Blom, 1971.
Works as E. S. Drower
- The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran: Their Cults, Customs, Magic, Legends, and Folklore, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937.
- Peacock Angel: Being Some Account of Votaries of a Secret Cult and Their Sanctuaries, London: J. Murray, 1941.
- Water into Wine: A Study of Ritual Idiom in the Middle East, London: Murray, 1956.
- The Secret Adam: A Study of Nasoraean Gnosis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.
- A Mandaic Dictionary with Rudolf Macuch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.[15][16]
- Drower's Folk-Tales of Iraq, edited by Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2007.
Translations as E. S. Drower
- The Book of the Zodiac = Sfar malwašia: D. C. 31, Oriental Translation Fund XXXVI; London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1949.
- Šarḥ ḏ qabin ḏ šišlam rba (D. C. 38). Explanatory Commentary on the Marriage Ceremony of the great Šišlam, text transliterated and translated, Rome: Ponteficio Istituto Biblico, 1950.
- Diwan Abaturor Progress Through the Purgatories, text with translation notes and Appendices, Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1950.
- The Baptism of Hibil-Ziwa: the Mandaic text reproduced, together with translation, notes and commentary, Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1953.
- Mandaeans. Liturgy and Ritual. The Canonical Prayerbook of the Mandaeans, translated with notes, Leiden: Brill, 1959.
- Alf trisar šuialia. The Thousand and Twelve Questions: A Mandaean Text, edited in transliteration and translation, Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1960.
- The Coronation of the Great Šišlam, Leiden: Brill, 1962.
- A Pair of Naṣoraean Commentaries: Two Priestly Documents, the Great First World and the Lesser First World, translated, Leiden: Brill, 1963.
References
- ^ a b Mandaean manuscripts given by Lady Ethel May Stefana Drower. Archives Hub.
- ^ a b c d e Christa Müller-Kessler, Drower [née Stevens], Ethel May Stefana, Lady Drower, in New Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 16 (Oxford, 2004), pp. 193–194. [1]
- ^ Today stored as Drower Collection (DC) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A comprehensive list is found in E. S. Drower, A Mandæan Bibliography, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1953, pp. 34–39.
- ^ Rudolf Macuch, Lady Ethel Stefana Drower, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 124, 1974, pp. 6–12.
- ^ E. S. Drower, A Mandæan Book of Black Magic, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1943, pp. 149–181
- ^ E. S. Drower, A Phylactery for Rue. (An Invocation of the Personified Herb), Orientalia N.S. 15, 1946, pp. 324–346.
- ISBN 9789004222472.
- J. B. Segal, Obituary: Ethel Stefana, Lady Drower, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 35, 1972, p. 621.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-59333-621-9.
- ^ Mitteilungen des Komitees für die Lidzbarski-Stiftung, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 114, 1964, p. *10*.
- OCLC 65198443.
- ISBN 978-90-04-20519-2.
- ^ Abbas Effendi: His personality, work, and followers, by E. S. Stevens, The Fortnightly Review, New series vol 95, no 534, 1 June 1911, pp. 1067–1084
- ^ The light in the lantern, by Ethel Stefana Stevens, Everybody's Magazine, vol 24, no 6, Dec 1911, pp. 755– 786
- ^ vk.com
- ^ damienlabadie.blogspot.gr
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to E. S. Drower.
| People |  | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Historical identities | |||||||||||||||
| Priesthood | |||||||||||||||
| Literature |
| ||||||||||||||
| Cosmology |
| ||||||||||||||
| Important figures | |||||||||||||||
| Legendary figures | |||||||||||||||
| Concepts |
| ||||||||||||||
| Objects and symbols | |||||||||||||||
| Ritual food and drink |
| ||||||||||||||
| Clothing | |||||||||||||||
| Rituals and practices | |||||||||||||||
| Buildings and structures | |||||||||||||||
| Calendar |
| ||||||||||||||
| Language | |||||||||||||||
| Other topics | |||||||||||||||
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
