Smart women around the Inklings

Tolkien and colleague E.V. Gordon worked together to translate the Anglo-Saxon poem Pearl. Unfortunately, the work was interrupted by the untimely death of Gordon in 1938. This discouraged Tolkien, who was already to busy with other projects to see it through completion.

However, the footnotes of his Biography note:

Tolkien intended to complete the Pearl edition, but he foud himself unable to do so (by this time he absorbed in writing The Lord of the Rings). It was eventually revised and completed for publication by Ida Gordon, the widow of E.V. Gordon, and herself a professional philologist.

-Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography, p.145

Here we find one of the few well education women surrounding the Inklings. Carpenter mentions her later in the Biography as one of the few wives who had skills or ambitions beyond the domestic. I’m curious her relationship with her academic husband looked like.

The only other lady I’ve ever come across mentioned in connection with the Inklings is Dorothy Sayers.