Alpha and Omega

From Marginalian Editions, a remarkable essay collection by the iconoclastic historian Jane Ellen Harrison, hero to generations of writers from Virginia Woolf to Mary Beard, exploring seemingly opposing forces from magic and theology to peace and patriotism.

Published at the outset of World War I, the essay collection Alpha and Omega was the capstone of the remarkable career of Jane Ellen Harrison, the iconoclastic classics scholar who became legendary as the first woman paid professional academic—who emanated fearlessness, sparkling wit, and powers of insight that reshaped our understanding of ancient Greek culture. But her far-ranging mind did not limit itself to the ancients: throughout her career, Harrison gave wildly popular lectures on topics as varied as paganism, evolution, modern art, and women’s suffrage.

As Harrison notes in the lead essay of the collection, humorously titled “Crabbed Age and Youth,” there is often great friction between the young and the old, but this friction can, “if rightly understood and considerately handled on both sides, take the form of mutual stimulus and attraction.” This balancing of seemingly irreconcilable antagonists—of alpha and omega—threads its way through the essays collected here in ways that feel just as fresh, surprising, and brilliant as when they were written, inviting us to think about think about the seemingly irreconcilable conflicts of our own age in new way.