She produced numerous English translations of classical and medieval Latin texts which were published in the mid-twentieth century.

William died in the 1918 flu pandemic, leaving her mother, Betty, sister Nancy and a brother in diminished circumstances.

She was granted a scholarship to St Hilda's College, Oxford, where she read Classics beginning in 1931.

Her son, William Radice, an academic at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, was a scholar of Bengali language and literature.

[5] Her son William noted that she found translation challenging, writing in 1974, "...nothing in my experience involves so much drudgery, minute application, exasperation at being tied to another's thought processes.