Background
Lilian (Anne) Jeffery was born at Westcliff-on-Sea to a schoolmaster and lecturer in classics.
Lilian (Anne) Jeffery was born at Westcliff-on-Sea to a schoolmaster and lecturer in classics.
She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies" College and in 1933 went up to Newnham College, Cambridge where she studied under Jocelyn Toynbee.
Building on the work of Adolf Kirchhoff and Antony East. Raubitschek, Jeffery surveyed the development of the Greek alphabet from its adoption down to the fifth century British Columbia and in so doing established the chronology of archaic inscriptions. She served in the WAAF during the war. Participant of her duties included intelligence interpretation of aerial photographs.
In 1946 she took up the position of research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she remained for the rest of her career apart from a period of research at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton.
Her archaeological work included field study with the British School at Old Smyrna (Bayrakli) in 1949. She also made major contributions to the study of Attic grave monuments and the epigraphical edition project Inscriptiones Graecae i3.
Her archive is preserved at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents, Oxford, digitised and published online.
