Mary Madge Lascelles (7 February 1900 – 10 December 1995) was a British literary scholar, specialising in Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, and Walter Scott. She was vice-principal of Somerville College, Oxford, from 1947 to 1960, and a university lecturer then reader in English literature 1960 from to 1967 at the University of Oxford.
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Early life and education
Lascelles was born on 7 February 1900 on Grenada, then a British colony, to Madeline Lascelles (née Barton) and William Horace Lascelles. Her paternal grandfather was Henry Lascelles, 4th Earl of Harewood.
When she was three, her family moved back to England, where they lived successively in Monmouth, Suffolk, and then Norfolk. She learnt to read only at the age of eight, having previously been read to by her parents. Her early education was by governess, before attending Sherborne School for Girls, a private boarding school, from the age of 15.
In 1919 Lascelles matriculated into Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, then an all-girls college of the University of Oxford, to study English. Her tutor was Janet Spens and she also attended lectures by Walter Raleigh. She graduated with a first class Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1922; women had been allowed to graduate with degrees from Oxford only since 1920. From 1922 she undertook postgraduate studies under the supervision of George Stuart Gordon.