Biographies

Isaline B. Horner (1896-1981)

Isaline B. Horner, known to her friends as “Squizzie,” began her lifelong association with Newnham College as a student (Moral Sciences, 1914-18). She stayed on (1918-20) as Assistant to the Librarian, Mary Fletcher, and then served as Acting Librarian (1920-21) when Fletcher left the college. In 1921 Horner accepted an invitation to accompany D.J. Stephen, sister of  Katharine Stephen, on a trip to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), India and Burma (now Myanmar). Although Stephen probably considered the trip a Christian mission, she and Horner shared an interest in Eastern religions, and Horner filled her letters home with descriptions of Buddhist and Hindu practices she encountered in these British colonies.

After two years abroad, Horner returned to Newnham as Librarian and Fellow (1923). Shortly thereafter, she began studying the religion she had observed in Ceylon: Theravada Buddhism. In 1925, Horner undertook the study of Pali, the language of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures, under the guidance of Cambridge professor E. J. Rapson. In this same year she began her relationship with the Pali Text Society, to whose efforts to produce editions in roman characters, as well as English translations of the Theravada scriptures, Horner would contribute for the rest of her life.

Horner continued to live and work at Newnham College – and to pursue her study of Pali texts (including research supported by a Sarah Smithson Research Fellowship, 1928-31) – until 1936. Horner moved that year to Manchester with her companion Elsie Butler (then Lecturer and Director of Studies in Modern Languages at Newnham and Cambridge University Lecturer in German), who had been appointed to a prestigious professorship at Manchester University. Horner moved to London in 1943 to care for her parents and to facilitate her leadership of the Pali Text Society. Butler joined her there in 1951, after retiring as Cambridge University Schroder Professor of German and Professorial Fellow at Newnham – posts she had held since 1945.

Although Horner did not live or work full-time in Newnham after 1936, she remained actively involved with the college as an Associate (1931-59 & 1962-76) and Member of the Governing Body (Associate Fellow, 1939-49). She maintained a particular interest in the college library and donated funds toward the construction of its extension in the early 1960s.

The University of Ceylon granted Horner an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1964, as did Nava Nalanda Mahavihara in 1977. In 1980, Horner received an Order of the British Empire for her services to the Pali Text Society. She died in London on April 25, 1981.

Grace Burford, 2005

To read further

• L. Cousins, A. Kunst, and K. R. Norman, eds., Buddhist Studies in Honour of I. B. Horner Boston and Dordrecht, Netherlands, 1974.