In memory of Jill Franklin (1928 ~ 1988)
Flat 5, 17-19 Elsworthy Road
London NW3 3DS
Phone: 020 7722 4543
Registered Charity No. 10001754
JILL FRANKLIN was born in Hampstead, daughter of S.C. Leslie OBE and Doris Falk.
She was educated at nine schools, including Badminton and St. Paul’s Girls School.
She won an exhibition to St. Hugh’s College, where she read
Literae Humanitiores.
(Greek and Latin Literature and Philosophy) and gained a second class honours degree.
After graduating, she studied typographic design at Camberwell, and then worked as a
jacket designer at Chatto & Windus. (She had to resign on marrying another publisher).
After her marriage to Norman Franklin in 1953, she worked part time as a coach and
helped Judith Hubback in the preparation of her book Graduate Wives (PEP 1955). She
started to study art history at the Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute for the University of
London Extramural Diploma, and received distinctions throughout. She was encouraged
to take the subject further, and Sir Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld Institute suggested that
she should go straight to a Ph.D. Her supervisor was Sir Nicholas Pevsner, and her
thesis was on the planning of Victorian country houses, which became a book, the
Gentleman's Country House and its Plan. (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980).
When she had been awarded her doctorate, she taught art history and architectural
history with the University of London Extramural Department the WEA and various other
organisations.
In 1980 she was operated on for cancer, and in 1988 she died of septicemia brought on
by the lack of lymphatic glands in the armpit just after her 36th wedding anniversary, and
just before her 60th birthday.
