Somerville College, Oxford University

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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...
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
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 Dorothy L. Sayers
DLS attended Somerville College, Oxford, where she studied medieval French.
Reynolds, Barbara. Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul. Hodder and Stoughton, 1993.
45, 62
Brabazon, James. Dorothy L. Sayers. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1981.
47, 48
Education Doreen Wallace
DW took the equivalent of a BA Honours degree in English at Somerville College , Oxford, just the year before women were actually first admitted to Oxford degrees.
Shepherd, June. Doreen Wallace, 1897-1989: Writer and Social Campaigner. Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.
25
Blain, Virginia, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Education Lucy Boston
LB was educated first at local schools at Southport and Arnside, then at Downs School, Seaford,Sussex, and then at a Quaker school in Surrey. She went to a finishing school in Paris before...
Education Muriel Jaeger
After graduating from Sheffield High School , MJ went up to Somerville College, Oxford , as a Clothworkers' Scholar (that is, on a scholarship funded by one of the traditional London guilds).
Reynolds, Barbara. “"‘Dear Jim…’ The Reconstruction of A Friendship”. Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, pp. 47 -59.
48
Education Rose Macaulay
RM 's godfather, Reginald Heber Macaulay (Uncle Regi), paid for her to enter Somerville College, Oxford , to read Modern History.
Emery, Jane. Rose Macaulay: A Writer’s Life. John Murray, 1991.
61-2, 79
Babington Smith, Constance. Rose Macaulay. Collins, 1972.
42-3
Education Elizabeth Bowen
The school was run by Olive Willis , a graduate of Somerville College , Oxford, a very strong-willed and influential woman. The school was slightly irregular and amateurish,
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
39
but the pupils were expected to...
Education Doreen Wallace
Her time at Malvern was probably financed by her paternal aunts. She changed her name to Doreen because her schoolmates included too many Eileens, and learned tennis, debating, and (her favourite subjects) literature, painting, music...
Education Muriel Jaeger
MJ travelled back to Oxford to take part in the ceremony of the first official award of Oxford University degrees to women, together with several of her Somerville College contemporaries.
Reynolds, Barbara. “"‘Dear Jim…’ The Reconstruction of A Friendship”. Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, pp. 47 -59.
53
Education Vera Brittain
VB began her first year at Somerville College , Oxford, two months after the outbreak of the first world war.
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus, 1995.
64-5
Education E. J. Scovell
EJS , at Somerville College , received an Oxford BA in English, having begun her degree course in classics.
Dowson, Jane, editor. Women’s Poetry of the 1930s: A Critical Anthology. Routledge, 1996.
122
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Education Doreen Wallace
DW went up to Somerville College on a bursary and an exhibition (each a form of scholarship). The university was much changed by the absence of men at the war, and Somerville's buildings had been...

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...