The Life Of Margaret Alice Murray

The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work in Archaeology, by Kathleen L. Sheppard, is a scientific biography of Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963), exploring all the facets of women's work in the history of archaeology and academia in the first half of the 20th century. This is not another Great Woman in place of a Great Man biography, but is instead the unlikely story of the first professional female Egyptologist in Britain who has so far been largely ignored by historians.

Review: A biography of Margaret Murray has been long overdue...Sheppard ... writes with lucidity and purpose; she has the rare gift of being able to engage her reader throughout the 267 densely packed pages...This biography is a meticulously researched work, which it has been very well worth the waiting for, by a writer who has an intrepid capacity for ferreting about in archives and in graveyards.

Egyptian Archaeology This delightful book is the first full analysis of Margaret Murray's productive and colourful life. Based on sound scholarship, Kathleen L. Sheppard successfully brings to life a 'small and energetic' woman who is revealed to have been a crucial link between nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egyptology, between the world of the amateur and the professional, and between the worlds of women and men.

Brightly researched, clearly and coherently written, this is a book for all audiences and all ages. It is a joy to read. -- Pamela Jane Smith, University of Cambridge Kathleen L. Sheppard's biography of Margaret Murray, an important, but largely overlooked figure, makes an important contribution to the study of the history of Egyptology and archeology.

Sheppard's approach, and in particular her focus on the social context of Murray's work, and her position as a woman working in a series of male-dominated worlds in Britain and in Egypt, of academia and archeology in particular, is especially enlightening. -- Christopher Naunton, Egypt Exploration Society