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Penelope Murray

British historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionOct 6, 2025
Entity authorityQ27984278
Source-derived summary

Penelope Murray is an expert in ancient history with an interest in ancient poetics and the Muses. After research posts at King's College London and St Anne's College, Oxford, she was a founder member of the department of Classics at the University of Warwick, with promotion to Senior Lectureship in 1998. After retiring from Warwick, Murray has been working on the Blackwell Companion to Ancient Aesthetic, co-editing with Pierre Destrée.

Selected publications

Murray, Penelope; Wilson, Peter (2004), Music and the Muses : the culture of 'mousikē' in the classical Athenian city, Oxford, OCLC 556974009

Murray, Penelope; Dorsch, T S (2000), Classical literary criticism, Penguin classics., London, ISBN 9780140446517

Murray, Penelope (1999), "What is a Mythos for Plato?", in Richard Buxton (ed.), From myth to reason : studies in the development of Greek thought, OCLC 848777577

Plato; Murray, Penelope (1995), Plato on poetry, Cambridge Greek and Latin classics., Cambridge, ISBN 9780521349819

Murray, Penelope (1989), Genius : the history of an idea, Oxford, UK, ISBN 9780631157854

References

External links

BBC Radio 4 In Our Time (radio series) link on "The Muses". Penelope Murray on the panel with Paul Cartledge and Angie Hobbs.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Penelope Murray” as british historian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Penelope, Murray and British.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1998, 2004, 2000, 1999—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948-12-07. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Penelope, Murray and British providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Penelope Murray”, the useful work is to connect “british historian” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 6, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q27984278. VIAF identifies the subject as 110780352. The Library of Congress control number is n81131091. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1998, 2004, 2000 and 1999.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Penelope Murray”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Penelope Murray primary sources, Penelope Murray archive and Penelope research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Penelope Murray” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.