Professor

This chapter follows Edith after she had a breakdown in Chicago in December 1929. She recovered sufficiently from this breakdown to accompany Manly and his sister, Mrs. Patrick (Hellen, b. 1867), to Portugal and the Canary Islands. But in April 1930 she had another in London. She recuperated on the island of Great Blasket in County Kerry, Ireland. When she returned to Chicago she characteristically insisted on teaching her missed Summer courses as well as her current Autumn ones. Her correspondence with archivists Vincent and Lilian Redstone shows her similarly pushing herself over the Chaucer projects. In the early 1930s great progress was made on the edition, with Edith additionally uncovering a great deal about Chaucer’s life. She had also not abandoned her fiction, as she movingly tells medievalist and author Helen Waddell (1889–1965).