Virgina Ridley Ellis

1934 - 2018

Virginia Ridley Ellis, former member of the English Department faculty at Mount Holyoke College, and longtime resident of Granby, Massachusetts, passed away on the eighteenth of October, 2018. Ms. Ellis taught composition, literary criticism, the Victorian novel and poetry of the Romantic and Victorian periods, serving Mount Holyoke College and its students with intellectual integrity and a passionate commitment to the study of English literature.

Virginia was born on August 28th , 1934, in Edinburgh, Scotland, the daughter of Maurice Roy Ridley and Katherine Scott. Mr. Ridley, a Don at Balliol College, was a noted Shakespearean textual scholar and author. Ms. Scott, his student, was one of the first American women to receive a graduate scholarship to Oxford University. World War II separated Virginia's parents in 1939, when she emigrated with her mother and sister, Alison, to Cleveland, Ohio, where she would eventually attend Laurel School, graduating in 1951.

Virginia's academic career began in earnest when she matriculated at Wellesley College, graduating summa cum laude with a BA in English, Class of 1956. Following in her mother's footsteps, she was accepted later that year for post-graduate study at St. Anne's college, where she won an inter-college scholarship in a poetry competition and achieved "senior status," enabling her to take final exams for her Oxford integrated MA degree after two years instead of the usual three, in 1958. She achieved a rare Congratulatory First, which the New York Times has described as, "a highly unusual honor" in which the examining professors ask no questions about the candidate's written work but simply stand and applaud." Among those applauding was Virginia's father, M.R. Ridley.

Following Oxford, Virginia became Instructor of English at Mount Holyoke College, where she would meet and marry James Ellis, who became a colleague for 3 decades at Mount Holyoke, where they contributed their talents to producing, writing and the Faculty Show for many years. The pair enjoyed photo-safaris to Africa and vacations in Scotland, where they would attend sheepdog trials.

In 1969, Virginia earned her PhD at Brandeis University. Her dissertation, "Authentic Cadence: The Sacramental Method of Gerard Manley Hopkins," was supervised by the eminent poet, Howard Nemerov. The substance of this thesis was later published as a book, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Language of Mystery (University of Missouri Press, 1991), praised by Helen Vendler as "a real advance in the comprehending of Hopkins' mode of composition, of his sensibility and of the unfolding of his career."

Generations of students will remember Virginia as one who taught them to love and understand the poetry and prose of the Romantics and Victorians. She is survived by her sister, Alison; her niece, Merian Bylund; and her nephews, Robert and James Evans.