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Authority record

Vendler, Helen [née Hennessy], (1933-2024), academic, writer and literary critic

  • Person
  • 30 April 1933 - 23 April 2024

Professor Helen Vendler was an American academic, writer and literary critic. She was a professor of English language and history at Boston University, Cornell, Harvard, and other universities. Her academic focus was critical analysis of poetry and she studied poets from Shakespeare and George Herbert to modern poets such as Wallace Stevens and Seamus Heaney. Her technique was close reading, which she described as "reading from the point of view of a writer".

She was the Parnell Fellow at Magdalene College from 1994-1995 and was elected as an Honorary Fellow in 1997.

Her portrait, by Mrs Mary Minifie, is the first of a female Fellow to hang in Hall (2024).

Van de Weyer, Jean Sylvain (1802-1874), diplomat

  • Person
  • 19 January 1802 – 23 May 1874

Van de Weyer served as Belgium’s Prime minister from July 1845 to March 1846. However, he lived for the majority of his life in London (17 Fitzroy Square, 50 Portland Place) and Windsor (New Lodge), and held the office of Belgian Minister at the Court of St. James’s under Queen Victoria, an ambassadorial role. Van de Weyer was close friends with Lord Palmerston. In addition to being a member of the Roxburghe Club, Van de Weyer was a founder member of the Philobiblon Society, the Vice President of the London Library, a Member of the Société des Bibliophiles de Belgique and the Head of the Royal Library of Brussels.
Pierre Henri Laurent said of Van de Weyer: 'His manners, taste, and savoir-faire brought him into the vital center of the intellectual, diplomatic, and financial communities. His home became the meeting place of writers, artists, and scientists’.

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