OBITUARY: Kathleen Lea

Kathleen Lea's service to the Malone Society - dedicated to the exact reproduction of English play texts and dramatic documents before 1640 (and for whom she edited Philip Massinger's Parliament of Love, 1929) - deserves mention, writes Professor G.R. Proudfoot [further to the obituary by Rachel Trickett, 27 January]. Her edition of John Lyly's Mother Bombie (1948) was planned for 1939, the year in which she joined the society's Council as its Honorary Secretary.

Over the next 44 years Kate Lea executed the onerous duties of this office with unfailing good-humour. At council meetings her memory of precedents and clear-sighted solutions to procedural difficulties were invaluable. While other duties caused a succession of scholars to resign from the society's offices, she remained firm. Indeed for the majority of members Miss Lea was its embodiment: a fact to which the volume of mail they continued to address to her after 1983 bore witness.