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01/04/2012 11:00 PMConstance Bartlett Hieatt died at her home in Essex on Dec. 29. She was the wife of the late A. Kent Hieatt. A professor of English, a medieval scholar, and a pioneer in the field of medieval cookery, Dr. Hieatt moved back to Connecticut, where she had spent her childhood summers, upon her retirement as professor emeritus from the University of Western Ontario. Dr. Hieatt continued her scholarly work and published numerous works after her retirement, including her latest Cocatrice and Lampray Hay: Late Fifteenth-Century Recipes from Corpus Christi College Oxford, which will be published on Feb. 22, 2012. At the time of her death she was working on the final editing of her last book, The Culinary Recipes of Medieval England, which will be completed with the assistance of her sister, Ellen Nodelman, and published posthumously.
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Hieatt grew up in New York City and in Connecticut, graduating from Friends Seminary, attending Smith College, and earning her bachelor's and master's degrees from Hunter College. She was awarded a fellowship from Yale and earned her Ph.D. in 1959. Before her entrance into academia, Dr. Hieatt worked in a variety of positions in print media and other businesses in New York City.
After two brief marriages, to George Loomis and to Michael Bodkin, she met and married fellow medievalist Dr. A. Kent Hieatt, then teaching at Columbia, forming a lasting partnership that took the pair from New York City to full professorships at the University of Western Ontario. They spent their summers at Wytham Abbey, outside of Oxford, England, before they retired and returned to Connecticut, living first in a house built in back of the old family home on River Road in Deep River, and finally, in Essex Meadows. Dr. Kent Hieatt died in January of 2009.
Like her husband, Dr. Hieatt began her medieval studies as a Chaucerian,but she moved on to focus her scholarly work largely on writings in Old English and Old Norse. She also formed an interest in children's literature and taught countless undergraduate courses on that subject. She combined her fascination with things medieval with her considerable expertise as a cook to begin her trail-blazing work in medieval cookery. Her substantial publishing record reflects the variety of her professional interests. She and her husband co-authored a children's version of The Canterbury Tales in the late 1950s, The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer - Special Edition For Young Readers, published by Golden Press and illustrated by Gustav Tengren. Later, they collaborated once again on The Canterbury Tales, this time the Bantam dual-language edition still in use in schools and universities the world over. Dr. Hieatt also published Beowulf and Other Old English Poems, again familiar texts to English students past and present, as well as her translation of the Old Norse saga, Karlamagnus: The Saga of Charlemagne and His Heroes, and a basic text for learning Old English: Essentials of Old English. Dr. Hieatt wrote a series of children's books as well, based on the "Matter of Britain" or Arthurian legends, including Gawain and the Green Knight, The Castle of Ladies, The Knight of the Cart, The Knight of the Lion, The Minstrel Knight, The Sword and The Grail and The Joy of the Court. Among her many medieval cookery offerings was the popular Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, co-written with Professor Sharon Butler; Curye on Inglysch with Sharon Butler; Concordance of English Receipes: Thirteen through Fifteenth Centuries; Libellus De Arte Conquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book with Rudolph Grewe; An Ordinance of Pottage; The Form of Cury: The Cuisine of the Court of Richard II of England, as well as her most recent books mentioned above.
In the past few years, Dr. Hieatt shared her medieval expertise with her fellow residents in Essex Meadows by giving some very well-received talks on the subject, including one on medieval cookery, one on Beowulf and, most recently, one on "The Miller's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and is listed in Who's Who in America and other reference works.
Dr. Hieatt is survived by her sister and brother-in-law, Ellen and Leonard Nodelman of Deep River; her stepdaughters, Katherine Hieatt of Brooklyn, New York, and Alice Coulombe, of New City, New York; and her grandchildren, Daisy Allen of Los Angeles, California, and Zachary Kruskal of Brooklyn, New York. She is also survived by her nephew, Noah Bartlett of Washington, D.C. and his sons, Aaron and Jack (Jonathan); her niece, Rachel Alemany of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and her sons, Caleb and Jonah Alemany; her niece, Stacey Nodelman of West Hurley, New York, and her daughters, Kaya and Jasper Nodelman; her grandniece, Pascal Frey-Nodelman, also of West Hurley, New York; and her cousin, Gwynne Grisworld of King George, Virginia. She was predeceased by her brother, Jonathan Bartlett, formerly of Deep River, and her nephew, Adam Nodelman, formerly of Woodstock, New York.
A memorial service is being planned for a March 10, 2012, at St. Johns Episcopal Church in Essex.