Margaret S. Ogden

Margaret S. Ogden
Born(1909-08-02)August 2, 1909
DiedApril 7, 1988(1988-04-07) (aged 78)
Occupations
  • Lexicographer
  • medievalist
Spouse
Henry V. S. Ogden
(m. 1934)
Children2
AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship (1960)
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
DisciplineMiddle Ages
Sub-disciplineMedieval medicine of Western Europe
InstitutionsUniversity of Michigan

Margaret Sinclair Ogden (née Holderman; August 2, 1909 – April 7, 1988) was an American historian and lexicographer. A 1960 Guggenheim Fellow, she was a historian of medieval medicine of Western Europe, and in addition to publishing two edited versions of medieval medicine texts, co-authored English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century (1955) with her husband Henry V. S. Ogden. She also worked at the University of Michigan as a researcher and editor for their Middle English Dictionary for four decades.

Biography

Margaret Sinclair Ogden was born on August 2, 1909, in Asheville, North Carolina.[1] She was the daughter of Clement M. Holderman and Canadian-born writer Elizabeth Sinclair Peck.[2][3] After attending Berea College (where her mother taught history at the time[3]), she then moved to the University of Michigan, where she got a BA in 1927 and MA in 1928, and the University of Chicago, where she got a PhD in 1935.[4]

In 1933, she started working for UMich's Middle English Dictionary as a research assistant, serving until 1937.[5] In 1940, she became a research associate, and she was promoted to assistant editor in 1944.[5] In 1973, she retired from the Middle English Dictionary.[2]

Outside of working on the Middle English Dictionary, Ogden also studied medieval medicine as an academic.[2] In 1938, she published The Liber de Diversis Medicinis, an edition of the medical treatise in the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript.[6] In 1955, she and her husband co-wrote English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century,[2] a monograph on aesthetic taste in English culture.[7] In 1960,[8] was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study the Chirurgia magna's medieval English-language translations.[4] She published an edition of the Chirurgia magna in 1971, known as The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac,[9] and The Liber de Diversis Medicinis received a reprint in 1988.[1] She also received several National Institutes of Health grants.[2]

On September 8, 1934, she married Henry V. S. Ogden, an English professor at UMich who was also an Early Modern English Dictionary editor.[10][2] They had two children.[2] She was a long-term resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan, having lived there from 1934 to 1986.[2]

Sinclair died on April 7, 1988, in Stamford, Connecticut.[1]

Bibliography

  • (ed.) The Liber de Diversis Medicinis (1938)[6]
  • (with Henry V. S. Ogden) English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century (1955)[11][7][12]
  • (ed.) The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac (1972)[9]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Margaret Sinclair Ogden". Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors. July 22, 2025 – via Gale In Context: Biography.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "Ogden, Margaret Sinclair". The Ann Arbor News. April 22, 1988. p. C3 – via Newspapers.com.
  3. ^ a b Howes, Durward (1937). American Women: 1937-38. American Publications. p. 527.
  4. ^ a b Reports of the President and of the Treasurer. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. 1959. pp. 179–180.
  5. ^ a b Directory of American Scholars. Vol. 2. Science Press. 1982. p. 527.
  6. ^ a b McIntosh, Angus (1939). "Review of The Liber de Diversis Medicinis". The Review of English Studies. 15 (59): 336–338. ISSN 0034-6551. JSTOR 509801.
  7. ^ a b Waterhouse, E. K. (1957). "Review of English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century". The English Historical Review. 72 (282): 120–122. ISSN 0013-8266. JSTOR 557782.
  8. ^ "Margaret Sinclair Ogden". Guggenheim Fellows. Archived from the original on November 27, 2024. Retrieved July 22, 2025.
  9. ^ a b Kuhn, Sherman M. (1972). "Review of The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac; The Middle English Translation of Guy de Chauliac's Treatise on Fractures and Dislocations: Book V of the Great Surgery; A Middle English Version of the Introduction to Guy de Chauliac's "Chirurgia Magna", Björn Wallner". Speculum. 47 (3): 544–548. doi:10.2307/2856177. ISSN 0038-7134. JSTOR 2856177.
  10. ^ "Society". Richmond Daily Register. September 10, 1934. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com.
  11. ^ Mayne, Jonathan (1957). "Review of English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century". The Burlington Magazine. 99 (649): 130–131. ISSN 0007-6287. JSTOR 872234.
  12. ^ Whiffen, Marcus (1957). "Review of English Taste in Landscape in the Seventeenth Century". The Art Bulletin. 39 (3): 243–245. doi:10.2307/3047721. ISSN 0004-3079. JSTOR 3047721.