Werner, Alice (1859–1935)

English linguist specializing in African languages. After studying the languages of Nyasaland (now Malawi) and Natal in South Africa 1893–99, she became professor of Zulu Languages at King's College, London. From 1911 she studied Swahili in East Africa, and in 1917 became inaugural lecturer at the School of Oriental Studies, London, retiring in 1930. Her best-known publication is Myths and Legends of the Bantu (1935).

Werner was born in Trieste, Italy, and travelled as a child in the Americas and to New Zealand, where she published some juvenile verse, before settling in Kent, England. Following her work in East Africa, she translated The Life of Job, and took up a research fellowship at Cambridge.