Dame Frances Amelia Yates (28 November 1899 – 29 September 1981) was an English historian of the Renaissance, who wrote books on esoteric history.
After attaining an MA in French at University College London, she began to publish her research in scholarly journals and academic books, focusing on 16th-century theatre and the life of the linguist and lexicographer John Florio. In 1941, she was employed by the Warburg Institute in London, and began to work on what she termed "Warburgian history", emphasising a pan-European and inter-disciplinary approach to historiography.
Her most acclaimed publication was Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), in which she emphasised the role of Hermeticism in Bruno's works and the role that magic and mysticism played in Renaissance thinking. The Art of Memory (1966), and The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (1972) are also major works. Yates wrote extensively on the occult or Neoplatonic philosophies of the Renaissance, which she is credited with making more accessible.
Biography
Youth: 1899–1913
Frances Amelia Yates was born on 28 November 1899 in the southern English coastal town of Southsea. She was the fourth child of middle-class parents, James Alfred and Hannah Malpas Yates, and had two sisters, Ruby and Hannah, and a brother, Jimmy. James was the son of a Royal Navy gunner, and occupied a senior position, overseeing the construction of dreadnoughts. He was a keen reader, ensuring that his children had access to plenty of books. James was a devout Anglican Christian, influenced by the Oxford Movement and sympathetic to the Catholic Church. Frances was christened in February 1900 at St. Anne's Church in the dockyard, although from an early age had doubts about Christianity and the literal accuracy of the Bible.
In 1902, James was transferred to Chatham Dockyards, and then in December 1903 he relocated to Glasgow to become superintendent of shipbuilding on the River Clyde. There, the family began attending the Scottish Episcopal Church of St. Mary. James retired in 1911, although continued to offer his advice and expertise to the dockyards. The family moved regularly over the coming years, from a farmhouse in Ingleton, Yorkshire, to Llandrindod Wells, to Ripon, to Harrogate, and then to Oxton in Cheshire. They also took annual holidays to France each summer.
Throughout this period, Yates' education was haphazard. In her early years, she was home schooled, being taught to read by her sisters before her mother took over her education as they moved away from home. When in Glasgow she briefly attended the private Laurel Bank School, but wouldn't attend school for two years after leaving the city. Despite a lack of formal education, she read avidly, impressed by the plays of William Shakespeare, and the poetry of the Romantics and Pre-Raphaelites, in particular that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Keats. She also began to write; in March 1913, Yates published a short story in the Glasgow Weekly Herald. Aged 16 she began writing a diary, in which she stated that "my brother wrote poems, my sister writes novels, my other sister paints pictures and I, I must & will do something. I am not much good at painting, I am no good at all at music, so there is only writing left. So I will write."
Early career: 1914–38
In 1914, the First World War broke out; her brother joined the British Army, and was killed in battle in 1915. As a result, she asserted that the "war broke our family... As a teenager I lived among the ruins." Deciding to pursue a university education, she unsuccessfully sat the University of Oxford entrance exam, hoping to study History. The family subsequently moved to Claygate, Surrey, settling into a newly built house in which Yates would reside until her death. Her sisters had moved away, leaving Frances to care for her ageing parents, although she also regularly took the train to central London, where she spent much time reading and researching in the library of the British Museum.