Margaret Hubbard in great classic steps of achievement; from Adelaide to Oxford universities in 1948
Margaret Hubbard (also inset) third from right in the foreground with a study group at St Anne's College, Oxford University.
Adelaide University graduate Margaret Hubbard was described by The Sunday Times, London, in 2011 as “one of the most distinguished classical scholars of the modern age”, with academic achievements at Oxford University unmatched by any other Australian.
Hubbard had showed passion for Egyptology at Adelaide High School but, as Adelaide University didn’t teach hieroglyphics, she studied Latin, Greek and English there in the 1940s, earning bachelor of arts honours and a master of arts. Working with classics, comparative philology and literature professor J.A. Fitzgerald and English professor Charles Jury, Hubbard went on to tutor in English and Latin for four years at Adelaide University.
Hubbard's knowledge of English literature was deep and extensive – matched by her work on Latin literature. Hubbard went to Somerville College, Oxford, in 1948 on the first scholarship awarded without an interview to an overseas applicant. She did the examination in Adelaide.
She took the premier course of study at Oxford, reading for Classical Moderations (Greek and Latin Literature), and Classical Greats (history and philosophy), winning a first class in both schools. In 1950, she was awarded the Hertford scholarship for Latin – the first time, since its start in 1834, it had been awarded to a woman. Hubbard also won the Craven and the Ireland scholarships, the highest honours in classics awarded by the university to undergraduates,
Hubbard also was appointed to the Craven Fellowship, the blue ribbon for classical scholars. This allowed her time working for the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae in Munich and studying manuscripts of Cicero’s agrarian speeches in Florence.
After studying as a Mary Somerville research fellow from 1955 to 1957, Hubbard was a founding fellow of St Anne's College at Oxford. She was the new college’s Mods don (classical languages and literature tutor), absorbed for the nearly 30 years in the heavy duties of teaching, examining, and college and university governance. Hubbard’s way of teaching was to treat her students as her equals and friends.
Her research was done between 4 o’clock in the morning and breakfast. Many years early-morning labour produced in 1970 the famous 440-page Oxford commentary on Horace Odes Book 1, written with R. G. M. Nisbet. Hubbard’s own book Propertius came in 1974, described as a landmark: “Trenchant, original, erudite and focussed on questions that matter”. Hubbard also published a carefully considered and highly-regarded translation of Aristotle’s Poetics (1972).
In her will, Hubbard gave money to fund St Anne’s College's fellowship in classical languages and literature, named after her father, A.E. Hubbard