Youth: 1899–1913 Frances Amelia Yates was born on 28 November 1899 in the southern English coastal town of
Southsea. She was the fourth child of middle-class parents, James Alfred and Hannah Malpas Yates, and had two sisters, Ruby and Hannah, and a brother, Jimmy. James was the son of a
Royal Navy gunner, and occupied a senior position, overseeing the construction of
dreadnoughts. He was a keen reader, ensuring that his children had access to plenty of books. James was a devout
Anglican Christian, influenced by the
Oxford Movement and sympathetic to the
Catholic Church. Frances was christened in February 1900 at
St. Anne's Church in the dockyard, although from an early age had doubts about Christianity and the literal accuracy of the
Bible. In 1902, James was transferred to
Chatham Dockyards, and then in December 1903 he relocated to
Glasgow to become superintendent of shipbuilding on the
River Clyde. There, the family began attending the Scottish Episcopal Church of St. Mary. James retired in 1911, although continued to offer his advice and expertise to the dockyards. The family moved regularly over the coming years, from a farmhouse in
Ingleton,
Yorkshire, to
Llandrindod Wells, to
Ripon, to
Harrogate, and then to
Oxton in
Cheshire. They also took annual holidays to France each summer. Throughout this period, Yates's education was haphazard. In her early years, she was home schooled, being taught to read by her sisters before her mother took over her education as they moved away from home. When in Glasgow she briefly attended the private Laurel Bank School, but wouldn't attend school for two years after leaving the city. Despite a lack of formal education, she read avidly, impressed by the plays of
William Shakespeare, and the poetry of the
Romantics and
Pre-Raphaelites, in particular that of
Dante Gabriel Rossetti and
John Keats. She also began to write; in March 1913, Yates published a short story in the
Glasgow Weekly Herald. Aged 16 she began writing a diary, in which she stated that "my brother wrote poems, my sister writes novels, my other sister paints pictures and I, I must &
will do something. I am not much good at painting, I am no good at all at music, so there is only writing left. So I will write."
Early career: 1914–38 In 1914, the
First World War broke out; her brother joined the British Army, and was killed in battle in 1915. As a result, she said that the "war broke our family... As a teenager I lived among the ruins." Deciding to pursue a university education, she unsuccessfully sat the
University of Oxford entrance exam, hoping to study history. The family subsequently moved to
Claygate, Surrey, settling into a newly built house in which Yates lived until her death. Her sisters had moved away, leaving Frances to care for her ageing parents, although she also regularly took the train to central London, where she spent much time reading and researching in the library of the
British Museum. In the early 1920s she began her undergraduate studies in French at the
University College, London. Enrolled as an
external student, she devoted herself to her studies, and did not socialise with other students. She was awarded her BA with first-class honours in May 1924. She published her first scholarly article in 1925, on "English Actors in Paris during the Lifetime of Shakespeare", which appeared in the inaugural issue of
The Review of English Studies. She then started an MA in French at the University of London, this time as an internal student. Her thesis was titled "Contribution to the Study of the French Social Drama in the Sixteenth Century", and in it she argued that the plays of this period could be seen as
propaganda aimed at the illiterate population. Although written for a degree in French, it was heavily historical, and showed Yates's interest in challenging prior assumptions and interpretations of the past. Supervised by Louis M. Brandin and F. Y. Eccles, she was awarded her MA on the basis of it in 1926. From 1929 to 1934, Yates taught French at the
North London Collegiate School, but disliked it as it left little time for her to devote to her research. While looking at records in the London
Public Record Office, she learned of
John Florio in a 1585 testimonial. Intrigued by him, she devoted her third scholarly paper to the subject of Florio: "John Florio at the French Embassy", which appeared in
The Modern Language Review in 1929. She proceeded to author a biography of Florio, ''John Florio: The Life of an Italian in Shakespeare's England'', which
Cambridge University Press published in 1934; they agreed to the publication on the condition that it be shortened and that Yates contributed £100 to its publication. The book gained positive reviews and earned Yates the
British Academy's Mary Crawshaw Prize. Having previously relied on self-taught Italian, in summer 1935 she spent several weeks at a course in the language held for scholars at
Girton College,
University of Cambridge; here she developed lifelong friendships with Nesca Robb and
Linetta de Castelvecchio, both fellow scholars of the Renaissance. Yates's second book was ''A Study of Love's Labour's Lost
, an examination of Love's Labour's Lost''. It was published by Cambridge University Press in 1936. Through her research into Florio, Yates had become intrigued by one of his associates,
Giordano Bruno. She translated Bruno's
La Cena de la ceneri (
The Ash Wednesday Supper), and added an introduction in which she argued against the prevailing view that Bruno had simply been a proponent of
Copernicus'
Heliocentric theories; instead she argued that he was calling for a return to Medieval Catholicism. She offered the book to Cambridge University Press, who declined to publish it; she later commented that it was "the worst of my efforts ... it was lamentably ignorant of Renaissance thought and Renaissance magic." In reassessing Bruno's thought, Yates had been influenced by a number of other scholars who had begun to recognise the role of magic and mysticism in Renaissance thought: French historian of science
Pierre Duhem, American historian
Lynn Thorndike, and Renaissance studies scholar Francis Johnson. Yates's biographer Marjorie Jones suggested that this interpretation was partly influenced by her own religious views, which – influenced by the Romanticists and Pre-Raphaelites – adored Catholic ritual and were critical of the Protestant Reformation.
Joining the Warburg Institute: 1939–60 One of Yates's friends, the historian and fellow Bruno scholar Dorothea Singer, introduced her to
Edgar Wind, Deputy Directory of the
Warburg Institute, at a weekend house party in
Par, Cornwall. At Wind's invitation, Yates contributed a paper on "Giordano Bruno's Conflict with Oxford" for the second issue of the
Journal of the Warburg Institute in 1939, which she followed with "The Religious Policy of Giordano Bruno" in the third issue. In these articles, she did not yet associate Bruno with Hermeticism. In 1941, the Warburg's Director
Fritz Saxl offered Yates a job at the institute, then based in
South Kensington; she agreed, taking on the post which revolved largely on editing the
Journal but which also gave her much time to continue her independent research. By this time, Britain had entered the
Second World War against
Nazi Germany, and Yates involved herself in the war effort, being trained in
first aid by the
Red Cross and volunteered as an ARP ambulance attendant. In 1941, her father died during an air raid, although the cause of death is not known. Yates herself continued to have depression, and was deeply unhappy. in
Woburn Square, London In 1943, Yates was awarded the
British Federation of University Women's
Marion Reilly Award. She also gave an address to the Federation's Committee on International Relations on "How will History be written if the Germans win this war?" At the Warburg, her intellectual circle included
Anthony Blunt,
Margaret Whinney,
Franz Boaz,
Ernst Gombrich,
Gertrud Bing,
Charles and
Dorothea Singer,
D. P. Walker,
Fritz Saxl,
Eugénie Droz, and
Roy Strong. At this time, she also developed lifelong friendships with Jan van Dorsten and
Rosemond Tuve, both scholars. Upon Britain's victory in the war, Yates was among a number of Warburg scholars who emphasised the need for pan-European historiography, so as to reject the
nationalisms that had led to the World Wars; this approach, she believed, must be both international and interdisciplinary. She described this new approach as "Warburgian history", defining this as the "history of culture as a whole – the history of thought, science, art, including the history of imagery and symbolism." Connected to this, she believed that school education should focus on pan-European, rather than simply British history. The Warburg Institute published Yates's third book in 1947 as
The French Academies of the Sixteenth Century. She described this as "an ambitious effort to apply the Warburgian modes of work, to use art, music philosophy, religion" to elucidate the subject. The following year, she began to contemplate writing a book on Bruno, and spent September 1951 in Italy, visiting places that had been associated with his life. By 1948, both Yates sisters had moved back to the family home in Claygate; however, in March 1951 Hannah died of
leukemia, and Yates's mother died in October 1952. Despite the problems in her personal life, she continued her scholarship, typically publishing two or three scholarly papers a year. She also lectured on the subjects of her research at various different universities across Britain; during the 1950s she lectured on the subject of
espérance impériale, which would later be collected and published as
Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (1975). In 1954,
Gertrud Bing became Director of the Warburg, overseeing the move from
South Kensington to a specially-constructed building in
Woburn Square,
Bloomsbury. Bing was a close friend of Yates, and they often went on holidays together. Yates's fourth book, published in 1959, was
The Valois Tapestries, in which she discussed
the eponymous tapestries in the
Uffizi in
Florence, Italy. She offered a novel interpretation of the tapestries, approaching them as if they were "a detective story" and arguing that they were meant as portraits of the French royal family.
International acclaim: 1961–81 Yates's scholarly productivity increased in the 1960s and 1970s, when she also became a regular book reviewer for
The New York Review of Books. In 1961, Yates authored
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, which has come to be widely regarded as her masterpiece. In her diary, she wrote that she now "saw Hermeticism as the clue to Bruno and the whole view of Renaissance magic in relation to him." She had been encouraged to adopt this view by her friend, D.P. Walker. The book was published in 1964 by Cambridge University Press. The work brought her international scholarly fame, and in 1965 she went on a lecture tour of the United States. Her next publication was a part-sequel to
Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, being published as
The Art of Memory in 1966. In 1967, she was elected a
Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). In 1969 she published
Theatre of the World. Her next book, published by Routledge in 1972, was
The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, in which she looked at the influence of the
Rosicrucian manifestos in 16th century Europe. In 1971, Yates was awarded an honorary doctorate from the
University of East Anglia, which was presented to her by
Angus Wilson, and in the New Year Honours 1972 Yates was appointed an
Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to Art History. In October 1973, she was awarded a £5000
Wolfson Award for her wider oeuvre, and in January 1974, Yates delivered four Northcliffe lectures at
University College London (UCL). They would subsequently be published by Routledge in 1975 as ''Shakespeare's Last Plays: A New Approach
. She was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975. That same year also saw the publication of Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century'', which collected together lectures that she had presented in the 1950s. In February 1976,
Smith College in
Northampton, Massachusetts offered Yates the Kennedy Professorship, which she declined. Yates was promoted in the
Queen's Birthday Honours 1977 to
Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE)
for services to Renaissance studies. In 1978, the
University of Pisa awarded her the Premio Galileo Galilei for her contribution to the study of Italian history. In March 1979, the
British Academy awarded her a £2000 grant so that she could continue to travel from her home to London in order to conduct research. In 1974, an
academic conference was held at
UCLA's
Clark Library in
Los Angeles, California, that debated and discussed what was termed the "Yates thesis". The last decade of her life saw her critics become both more numerous and more outspoken; however, she gained a champion in the form of historian
Hugh Trevor-Roper, who positively reviewed her works and became a personal friend. In 1979, Yates published
The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, in which she discussed the place of the
Christian Cabala during the Renaissance and its influence on Christian
Neoplatonism. It did not prove as successful as her books published in the 1960s. It was during the early 1970s that she began writing an autobiography, inspired by
E. M. Forster's biography of
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson; it was left unfinished on her death, although portions were published posthumously. In March 1979, Yates's sister Ruby moved into a nursing home, before Yates went on a lecture tour of the U.S. Ruby died in May 1980, leaving Yates as the last surviving member of her immediate family. In 1980 Yates was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In summer 1981, Yates went on a lecture tour of Hungary, coming to believe that Anglophone scholarship had neglected Central Europe. Her final lecture was delivered at
Manchester Cathedral, and was on the subject of
John Dee, whom Yates was taking an increasing research interest in. Shortly after, she fell over at home, and was hospitalised with a cracked
femur. She recovered and returned home, where she died in her sleep. Her body was
cremated in an Anglican memorial service. ==Scholarly writings==