12 Facts About Betty Radice

Betty Radice was a literary editor and translator.

Betty Radice became joint editor of Penguin Classics, and vice-president of the Classical Association.

Betty Radice produced numerous English translations of classical and medieval Latin texts which were published in the mid-twentieth century.

Betty Radice was granted a scholarship to St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she read Classics beginning in 1931.

Together they relocated to London where Betty Radice tutored in classics, Philosophy and English for Westminster Tutors and de Lisle began a civil service career.

When Baldick died in 1972 and his successor C A Jones died in 1974, Radice became the sole editor of the series.

Betty Radice spent 21 years as editor of Penguin Classics.

Betty Radice died on 19 February 1985, of a heart attack.

Betty Radice's son, William Radice, an academic at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, was a scholar of Bengali language and literature.

Two years after her death, a Festschrift honouring Betty Radice was published by Penguin, edited by William Betty Radice and Barbara Reynolds.

Betty Radice's editing was said to be "imaginative and open-minded, forever on the look-out for the new, the fresh, the surprising and the original".

Rieu did not believe that poetry could be reproduced in other languages and so favoured prose translations, Betty Radice herself preferred verse translations and under her editorship this became the norm.