ABSTRACT
Lucy Mair's contribution to anthropology is thus not only her esoteric and specialist contribution, for she has also, in five major areas of inquiry, brought esoteric knowledge within the grasp of ordinary educated and inquiring people. After graduating from Cambridge in 1922 Professor Mair spent five years working for the League of Nations Union, in association with Gilbert Murray. In 1971 she was appointed Honorary Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent: the post is honorific at least in the sense that it confers honour on the university, where Professor Mair lectures and teaches with apparently increasing vigour. It is worth calling special attention to those nine years, 1962-71, which follow Lucy Mair's sixtieth birthday. There are, common to all her works, certain qualities which make them instantly recognisable as those of Lucy Mair. The clarity and wit of her literary style are well-known, but are mere emanations of more fundamental virtues.
