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Dame Emily Penrose, DBE (18 September 1858, London - 26 January 1942, Bournemouth)[1] was a scholar and administrator. She became the Principal of three women's colleges - Bedford College, Royal Holloway College and, from 1907 until 1926, Somerville College, Oxford University .
Early life and education
[edit]Emily Penrose was the second of five children and eldest of the four daughters of Francis Cranmer Penrose, architect and archaeologist. Her grandmother was the writer 'Mrs Markham' and Matthew Arnold, the poet and critic, was a cousin.
She attended school in Wimbledon and was able to study languages and the arts during family visits to Europe. She shared an interest in science with her brother, Francis, and from her father she learned drawing and painting. Emily also learned modern Greek when she accompanied her father to Athens on his appointment as Director of the British School of Archaeology in 1886.
At the suggestion of Henry Pelham, a friend of her father's, Emily applied to Somerville College to read Literae Humaniores (Greats). She was awarded a scholarship and went up in 1889, becoming the first women to achieve a First in Greats in 1892.
Career
[edit]In 1893, Emily Penrose was appointed Principal of Bedford College and Professor of Ancient History; in 1898, she became the Principal of Royal Holloway College. It was over these 14 years that she developed her impressive administrative abilities, helping to integrate both colleges into the University of London (they were admitted as schools of the university in 1900). She was also a member of Senate and became skilled in administrative finance.
In 1907, Emily Penrose returned to Somerville College as its third Principal. She helped to raise the college's academic standards by introducing entrance examinations for all candidates.
Penrose, who never married, was emblematic of the history of women in Oxford. This was steady infiltration, as they gradually secured admission first to lectures, then to examinations, and finally, in 1920, to university membership. During this period Somerville took the lead in a number of important respects. In 1894 it became the first of the five women's halls of residence to adopt the title of 'college' and the first of them to appoint its own teaching staff, the first to set an entrance examination, and the first to build a library. With the establishment in 1903 of the Mary Somerville Research Fellowship it was the first to offer women in Oxford opportunities for research. In the 1890s the Somerville Council was prominent in an unsuccessful campaign to admit women to degrees. The success of the 1920 campaign owed much to the diplomatic skills and academic reputation of Emily Penrose, the Principal.[2]
Dame Emily Penrose's life is commemorated with her place on the wall in the Somerville College Chapel. In this prominent position, she is bookmarked by fellow ex-principals of the former women's-only college.
She was previously the second Principal of Royal Holloway College (RHC) from 1898-1907 where she succeeded Matilda Ellen Bishop. She was followed in that role by Ellen Charlotte Higgins. Prior to RHC she was the Principal of Bedford College from 1893-1898. Penrose was Principal of Somerville College when Vera Brittain went up to Oxford.
... again! And intend to write something about Somerville College.[3]
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - accessed 21 June 2011
- ^ Somerville College website.
- ^ [http:www.some.ox.ac.uk "Somerville College Oxford"].
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