Barbara Rooke

Rooke attended the Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, graduating with honours in 1940 and winning the Wilhelmina Gordon Foundation scholarship for English.[1] Following her master's degree the following year, she was in the Women's Division of the Royal Canadian Air Force until the end of the Second World War.[2] She was an assistant section officer based in Mossbank, Saskatchewan in charge of new recruits.[3]

Rooke obtained a Royal Society of Canada Fellowship to study abroad in 1948–1949.[4] She obtained a doctorate from the University of London.[5]

In 1948, Rooke and Kathleen Coburn undertook a research trip to Scotland, following Coleridge and Wordsworth's 1803 journey. Coburn related how their ration cards were often not accepted to obtain eggs and meat.[6] Rooke's doctoral research was on Coleridge, which she continued in her later academic life. This led to the two-volume edition of The Friend that she published in 1969 as part of the Bollingen series of Coleridge's collected works (edited by Kathleen Coburn),[7] for which she won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize.[8] The work was lauded for its beauty and lucidity.[9]

In 1951, Rooke was a member of the department of English at the Victoria College, University of Toronto.[10] She was a lecturer of English at the University College of the West Indies in Jamaica.[5] Between 1967 and 1979, she was a Professor of English literature at Trent University in Canada.[11]

A Barbara Rooke Fellowship for post-doctoral research was established by Trent University, allowing scholars to study the English Romantic period.[12] The Rooke Memorial Lectures are held annually since 1998 at the Trent University to honour Barbara Rooke.[13] The Barbara Rooke Travel Prize has been offered since 2013 to a high-achieving graduate of the university's English department to travel to a significant literary heritage site.[14]