Somerville College, Oxford University

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
death Mary Somerville
After her death, much of MS 's library was presented to the Ladies' College at Hitchin (now Girton College , Cambridge), and in 1879 Somerville College at Oxford University was named after her.
Patterson, Elizabeth Chambers. “Mary Fairfax Greig Somerville (1780-1872)”. Women of Mathematics: A Biobiliographic Sourcebook, edited by Louise S. Grinstein and Paul J. Campbell, Greenwood Press, 1987, pp. 208 - 16.
212
Oxford
death Amelia B. Edwards
She was buried in Ellen Braysher 's family plot at Henbury, just north of Westbury-on-Trym, her grave appropriately marked with an Egyptian obelisk. She bequeathed her egyptological library and collection of artefacts to...
Dedications Margaret Kennedy
MK dedicated her final novel, Not in the Calendar, 1964, to a Somerville friend, and gave it the subtitle The Story of a Friendship.
Dedications Marghanita Laski
ML dedicated to Mary Lascelles (who had taught her at Somerville College ) her bio- critical work on three Victorian writers for children: Mrs. Ewing , Mrs. Molesworth , and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett.
Laski, Marghanita. Mrs. Ewing, Mrs. Molesworth, and Mrs. Hodgson Burnett. A. Barker, 1950.
prelims
Maxwell, Mrs. “Ladies of Quality”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 2528, p. 438.
438
Education E. J. Scovell
She next attended, as a boarder, Casterton School in Westmorland (descendant of the Clergy Daughters' School which is infamous in connection with the Brontë sisters).
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Dowson, Jane, editor. Women’s Poetry of the 1930s: A Critical Anthology. Routledge, 1996.
122
She then went on to Somerville College, Oxford University .
Education Penelope Fitzgerald
Penelope Knox (later PF ) received a first-class Honours BA in English from Somerville , Oxford, her mother's old college. Her degree was what is called a congratulatory first.
Todd, Janet, editor. Dictionary of British Women Writers. Routledge, 1989.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Education Vera Brittain
Her VAD service completed, VB returned to Somerville College , Oxford, to finish her degree course.
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 1995.
138
Gorham, Deborah. Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life. Blackwell, 1996.
138
Education Iris Murdoch
IM went up to Somerville College , Oxford, on an Open Exhibition.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002.
78
Education Margaret Forster
Having sat the Oxford and Cambridge entrance exams at her school in Carlisle (taking the gamble of an extra term at school after her A-levels to do so, though if she failed to make Oxbridge...
Education Kathleen Nott
KN attended the highly respected Mary Datchelor School before moving on to King's College , London, for a year. After securing an open exhibition in English (the only subject I could get up...
Education Margaret Forster
MF gained her Honours BA in modern history from Somerville College, Oxford .
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
271
Education Judith Kazantzis
Judith Pakenham attended a Catholic convent school which in the same poem about her childhood she remembers as a prison where she used to cry all night. She took her BA in modern history at...
Education Ann Oakley
Ann Titmuss (later AO ) studied at Somerville College, Oxford ; she took an Honours BA, Second Class, in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics.
Oakley, Ann. Taking It like a Woman. Flamingo, 1992.
36, 48
Education Christopher St John
Christabel Marshall may probably have attended (with more than one of her sisters) Clifton High School for Girls . She was admitted in 1894 to Somerville College, Oxford , to read history, but did not...
Education Margaret Forster
MF loved Carlisle Girls' High School in a way that made my love of all school from the beginning seem a feeble thing—although she quickly realised her deficiencies, like not having heard of Dickens

Timeline

4 June 1878
Lady Margaret Hall , a women's college at Oxford University named after Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby , was founded.
October 1879
Somerville College , one of the two first residential women's colleges at Oxford University, opened its doors to students.
1889
Cornelia Sorabji , the first woman law student at a British university, enrolled at Somerville College , Oxford .
About September 1936
British haemotologist Janet Vaughan realised from work during the Spanish Civil War with the Committee for Spanish Medical Aid that blood transfusions could be successfully made with stored blood.
21 April 1958
Margery Fry died as almost a national celebrity: criminal justice reformer, prison reformer, campaigner for victims' compensation, educationalist (briefly Principal of Somerville College ), writer on children's care and development, and latterly broadcaster (a regular...
31 October 1984
Indira Gandhi , who had been Prime Minister of India with only one short break since 1967, was assassinated, shot down in her garden by two of her body-guards who were Sikhs, in retaliation for...