Ida Gordon

Ida Lilian Gordon (née Pickles)
Born	1907 Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died	2001 Rosemarkie
Occupation	Academic, philologist
Nationality	British
Subject	Philology

Ida Lilian Gordon (born Wakefield 1907, died Rosemarkie 2001) was a British academic, specialising in Medieval English and Old Norse. She took her BA in English at Leeds University from 1925–28, and completed her PhD there in 1930: 'A typographical study of the sagas of the Vestfirðir: Gull-Þórissaga, Gíslasaga, Hávarðarsaga, Fóstbrœðrasaga and of their traditions'. In 1931, she married E. V. Gordon, Leeds's Professor of English Language, with whom she had four children (the eldest of whom, Bridget Mackenzie, went on to lecture in Old Norse at Glasgow University).

Ida Gordon moved with her husband to Manchester on his appointment as Smith Professor of English Language and Germanic Philology at the University of Manchester. On his death in 1938, and with four children under 7 to support, she took on some of his teaching duties, working as a Lecturer until 1960, when she was promoted to Senior Lecturer. She retired in 1968. She visited Iceland twice, and in 1970 was a visiting professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

Her works include:

• Pearl, ed. by E. V. Gordon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953) (although credited to E. V. Gordon, Ida worked substantially on this after his death as well as seeing the work through the press)
• The Seafarer, ed. by I. L. Gordon, Methuen's Old English Library (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1960)
• The Double Sorrow of Troilus: A Study of Ambiguities in 'Troilus and Criseyde' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970)

In 2014, the estate of Ida's eldest daughter Bridget Mackenzie sold a collection of letters written variously to Ida and to her husband by J. R. R. Tolkien to the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds.