Helena Mary Mennie Shire, 1912-1991

Helena Mary Mennie was born in Aberdeen on 21 June 1912. She was educated at the Aberdeen High School for Girls, gaining the Dux medal in 1929, and at the University of Aberdeen, graduating with First Class Honours in English Literature and Language in 1933.

After taking a First in Part II of the English Tripos in 1935 at Newnham College, Cambridge, she continued her studies there over the next two years, undertaking a special study of broadside ballads of the seventeenth century, focusing particularly on the 'Bedlam Ballads'.

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