Anne Hudson (literary historian)

Hudson was born on 28 August 1938. She was educated at Dartford Grammar School for Girls, an all-girls state grammar school in Dartford, Kent. From 1957 to 1960, she studied English at St Hugh's College, Oxford, graduating with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree;[1][2] as per tradition, her BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Oxon) degree. She also undertook postgraduate research at Oxford in relation to Robert of Gloucester's English chronicle,[2] and completed her Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree in 1964.[1]

From 1961 to 1963 Hudson was a college lecturer in Medieval English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. In 1963, she was elected a Fellow of LMH and appointed a Tutor in English. She also held positions in the Faculty of English Language and Literature of University of Oxford: she was a CUF lecturer from 1963 to 1981, a special lecturer from 1981 to 1983, held a British Academy Readership in the Humanities from 1983 to 1986, was a lecturer in Medieval English from 1986 to 1989, before being appointed Professor of Medieval English in 1989.[1] She retired from full-time academia in 2003, and was made an honorary fellow of Lady Margaret Hall.[1][3]

In addition to her university posts she held a number of senior appointments at the Early English Text Society: she served as its executive secretary from 1969 to 1982 and as its director from 2006 to 2013, and she was a member of its council since 1982.[1]

Hudson's research interests included John Wycliffe, Wycliffite writing and the Lollards.[4][2]

In 1976 Hudson was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS).[1][5] She has twice been awarded the Sir Israel Gollancz Prize by the British Academy; in 1985 and in 1991.[6] In 1988 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences.[1][7]

A Festschrift was published in her honour in 2005: Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, edited by Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison.[8]

Hudson died on 8 December 2021, aged 83.[9][4]

• Hudson, Anne, ed. (1978). Selections from English Wycliffite Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521282581.
• Hudson, Anne (1988). The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-822762-5.
• Hudson, Anne, ed. (1993). Two Wycliffite Texts: The Sermon of William Taylor 1406, the Testimony of William Thorpe 1407. Oxford: Early English Text Society. ISBN 978-0-19-722303-1.
• Biller, Peter; Hudson, Anne, eds. (1996). Heresy and Literacy, 1000-1530. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57576-8.
• Hudson, Anne (2003). Lollards and their Books. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-0-907628-60-6.
• Hudson, Anne (2008). Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif's Writings. Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-5964-8.
• Hudson, Anne (2015). Doctors in English: A Study of the Wycliffite Gospel Commentaries. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-78138-131-1.