Ann Moss

Moss was born on 21 January 1938 to John Shakespeare Poole and Dorothy Kathleen Beese (née Sills). She was educated at Barr's Hill School, then a grammar school in Coventry, West Midlands.[2] She studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree: as per tradition, her BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab) degree.[2][3] She later undertook postgraduate studies at Cambridge, completing her Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in 1975.[2] Her doctoral thesis was titled "A study of the Latin editions of Ovid and commentaries printed in France, 1487–1600".[4]

From 1963 to 1964, Moss was an assistant lecturer at the University College of North Wales. She then joined Trevelyan College, Durham where she was a resident tutor from 1966 to 1979. Having also been a part-time lecturer while at Trevelyan, she became a full-time lecturer in French at the University of Durham in 1979. She was promoted to senior lecturer in 1985 and to reader in 1988. She was appointed Professor of French in 1996, and made Professor Emerita on her retirement 2003.[2][5][3] She was a member of the council of the British Academy from 2003 to 2006.[5]

In 1960, she married John Michael Barry Moss.[2] Together they had two daughters.[2] They divorced in 1966, and she would go on to raise their children as a single parent.[2][6]

Moss was additionally an active member of the Church of England. She was a lay minister, serving as a reader from 2005 to 2010.[2]

Moss died on 13 August 2018 in Morden College, Blackheath, London, aged 80.[6][7] Her funeral mass was held at Durham Cathedral.[8]

In 1998, Moss was elected a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA), the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.[5]

• Moss, Ann (1982). Ovid in Renaissance France: a survey of the Latin editions of Ovid and commentaries printed in France before 1600. London: Warburg Institute. ISBN 978-0854810598.
• Moss, Ann (1984). Poetry and fable: studies in mythological narrative in sixteenth-century France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521258890.
• Moss, Ann (1996). Printed commonplace-books and the structuring of Renaissance thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0198159087.
• Moss, Ann (2003). Renaissance truth and the Latin language turn. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0199249879.