Jocelyn Mary Catherine Toynbee, (3 March 1897 – 31 December 1985) was an English archaeologist and art historian. "In the mid-twentieth century she was the leading British scholar in Roman artistic studies and one of the recognized authorities in this field in the world." Having taught at St Hugh's College, Oxford, the University of Reading, and Newnham College, Cambridge, she became Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 1951 to 1962, the first and so far only woman to hold this position.
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Biography
Jocelyn Toynbee was the daughter of Harry Valpy Toynbee, secretary of the Charity Organization Society (1861-1941), and his wife Sarah Edith Marshall (1859–1939), who had been educated at Cambridge University at a time when women could not graduate (the first Cambridge degree awarded to a woman was in 1948). Her brother Arnold J. Toynbee was the noted universal historian. Her sister, Margaret Toynbee (1899-1987) was an Oxford Don.
Toynbee's parents were not wealthy and lived with Harry's retired Uncle (also called Harry Toynbee) in Paddington, London, where she and her siblings were born. Her father had a breakdown when she was around 10 and was institutionalised for the rest of his life meaning that her mother, Edith, was the most dominant figure in the children's lives. She drove them towards scholarships "pouring all her own frustrated education into driving them on to academic success".