Marjory Scott Wardrop


 

UK Flag waving

 

She was an English scholar and translator of Georgian literature. She was a sister of the British diplomat and scholar of Georgia, Sir Oliver Wardrop.

 Fluent in seven foreign languages, she also learned Georgian and travelled to Georgia (then part of Imperial Russia) in 1894-1895 and 1896. She translated and published Georgian Folk Tales (London, 1894), The Hermit by Ilia Chavchavadze (London, 1895), The Life of St Nino (Oxford, 1900), etc. She also made the first English prosaic translation of The Knight in the Panther’s Skin, a medieval Georgian epic poem by Shota Rustaveli (published by Wardrop in London, 1912). After her death, Sir Oliver created the Marjory Wardrop Fund at Oxford University ‘for the encouragement of the study of the language, literature, and history of Georgia, in Transcaucasia’.

A statue of Marjory and Oliver, by Jumber Jikia, was unveiled on 18 October 2015, during the Tbilisoba festival, in Oliver Wardrop Square, which itself opened during the Tbilisoba 2014. A room in the National Library in Tbilisi city also bears their names.