Marie Borroff, distinguished scholar, poet, translator and teacher of English literature, and one of the pioneering women at Yale University, died at her Branford, Connecticut, home on July 5.  She was 95. A long-time summer resident of Boothbay Harbor, this is the first summer in 70-some years she was not able to view the scene she loved so well, across Bottle Cove to Indiantown Island, Ebenecook, and beyond.

Professor Borroff received an undergraduate degree and a M.A. from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. from Yale University. After early teaching at Smith she was the first woman appointed  to Yale’s Department of English in 1959.  She was one of the first two women granted tenure in any department in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and in 1991 was the first woman in that body to be named a Sterling Professor, the highest honor bestowed on a Yale faculty member. Professor Borroff went on to win almost every award the University could bestow:  a Wilbur Cross medal honoring distinguished alumni; the Phi Beta Kappa DeVane Award for teaching; an endowed professorial chair named in her honor, the Marie Borroff Chair.

A Medieval and Anglo Saxon scholar and philologist by training, her range in scholarship and teaching extended far beyond this to what she called “the language of poetry and the poetry of language.”  In her 89th year she published her crowning achievement, The Gawain Poet: Complete Works, translations of all five Gawain poems, with a formidably erudite introduction. Her translations follow the metrical and rhyming structure of the original exactly and demonstrate her musical ear (she was a trained musician) and her feel for language, enabling her to create what one critic called a translation that was both “accurate and sensitive.” 

Marie was beloved by her students for her warmth, wit and encouragement. She will also be sorely missed by the extended Shepard family she “adopted,” many of whom live in Boothbay Harbor. She entertained them as an accomplished pianist and composed numerous songs for family occasions. Her sense of humor captivated all. Generous with her time and resources, she was truly “a woman for all seasons.”

Marie’s published book of her own poetry, “Stars and Other Signs,” includes several poems inspired by the Maine Coast, among them On Powderhorn Island, which ends with these lines: 

The shapes of thought drift free,

Borne seaward as a bell

Counts out the grave

Slow-syllabled unburdenings

Of wave on wave.

Professor Borroff’s last immediate relative, her younger sister Edith, died in March of this year.  Her close friend Professor Beatrice Bartlett will be glad to receive letters sent in care of 103 Adams, Evergreen Woods, 88 Notch Hill Road, North Branford, CT 06471 

A private burial will be held in Boothbay Harbor.  A memorial service will occur at Yale in the fall.