She taught at Rosary College in Illinois before joining the Swarthmore faculty in 1948.
An avid equestrienne, she told an interviewer for Swarthmore's alumni magazine that then-president John Nason informed her she was the only job candidate who ever insisted on seeing the school's stables.
As a young faculty member, Dr. North, a devout Catholic, helped establish - over Nason's objections - a Newman Club for Catholic students at Swarthmore.
Dr. North held several visiting-teaching appointments, including at Columbia University, Vassar College, and Cornell. She was a classicist in residence at the American Academy in Rome and held teaching and research posts at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.
She was the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, and Ford Foundation fellowships and two fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation.
Dr. North wrote numerous articles for academic publications, published two books on Greek literature, and was editor and translator of several classical volumes and college texts.
She was a member of the American Philosophical Society; past president of the American Philological Association; and chairwoman, for eight years, of the search committee for the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program. From 1973 to 2003, she served on the board of La Salle University.
Her many honors include a Harbison Prize, for outstanding accomplishments in college teaching. In 1989, she was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania.
