Miriam Allott

Miriam Allott or Miriam Farris; Miriam Farris Allott; Miriam Allott-Farris (1920–2010) was an English literary scholar. She was a professor in Liverpool and at Birkbeck College.

Life

Allott was born in Cairo or Fulham in 1920. This was just after her father Labib Farris who was an Egyptian medical student and her mother Ada Violet Rennie married. She studied in Cairo and the Froebel Demonstration School at the same time as Iris Murdoch. She then went to Liverpool University. After her degree in general studies she taught and studied for a doctorate in English literature on Henry James. She was supervised by her future husband. She became a talented lecturer in Liverpool University in 1948.

Her husbands first marriage ended in 1950 and she married him on 1 June 1951. Her husband wrote a number of noted books on literature. He was the Kenneth Muir Professor of English until he died. His position at Liverpool was taken over by his wife after his death, although by 1981 she was a professor at Birkbeck College.

Allott died in Liverpool in 2010. She had published a selection of Keats' poetry and Novelists on the Novel in 1959. She left her wealth to fund a lecturer at Liverpool University. She was also a discerning collector and she left her collections to the university and its own Victoria Gallery and Museum.