Elizabeth Wordsworth

Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth DBE (1840–1932) was founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and she funded and founded St Hugh's College. She wrote significantly including, sometimes, under the name Grant Lloyd. She was the great-niece of the poet William Wordsworth. She was the daughter of Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln. Her brothers were John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury, and Christopher Wordsworth, a liturgical scholar.

Elizabeth Wordsworth
Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth in 1928
BornJune 22, 1840
Harrow on the Hill, London
DiedNovember 30, 1932
Oxford
Pen nameGrant Lloyd
OccupationCollege leader, founder and writer
NationalityBritish
SubjectBiography

Life
Principal and Fellows of Lady Margaret Hall

Wordsworth was born in 1840 at Harrow on the Hill and she was educated at home, she learned several modern languages as well as (self taught) Latin and Greek though her knowledge of science and mathematics was meagre. Her mother was Susanna Hatley Frere and her father Christopher Wordsworth was a headmaster and later the Bishop of London. She travelled on European family trips and she was brought up in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey and in Stanford in the Vale in Berkshire.[1]

She was the founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1879[2] as a college for female undergraduates, on Norham Gardens in North Oxford. In 1886 she inherited some money from her father and founded St Hugh's College also in north Oxford as a college for poorer female undergraduates. Today this is one of the largest colleges in Oxford University. She received an honorary M.A. from Oxford in 1921 and an honorary D.C.L. in 1928.[1]

She was a prolific author, writing poetry, plays, biographies and religious articles, as well as writing and lecturing on women's education. She published the novels Thornwell Abbas, (two volumes, 1876)[3] and Ebb and Flow, (two volumes, 1883) under the pseudonym of Grant Lloyd. She wrote a song "Good and Clever",[4] which like her books came out of copyright in 2002.

Works include
  • Thornwell Abbas, (two volumes, 1876)[5]
  • Ebb and Flow, (two volumes, 1883)
  • Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, 1807-1885, with John Henry Overton, (1888)[6]
  • William Wordsworth, (1891)[7]

Further reading

Olivia Robinson and Alison Moulds published " Women in Oxford's History: Elizabeth Wordsworth" in 2016[3]

References
  1. Lannon, Frances (2004). "Wordsworth, Dame Elizabeth (1840–1932)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 9 May 2010.
  2. Olivia Robinson, Alison Moulds (19 October 2016), Women in Oxford's History: Elizabeth Wordsworth, retrieved 10 May 2020
  3. Wordsworth, Dame Elizabeth (1876). Thornwell Abbas. S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
  4. "Good and Clever". www.bachlund.org. Retrieved 10 May 2020.
  5. Wordsworth, Dame Elizabeth (1876). Thornwell Abbas. S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington.
  6. Overton, John Henry; Wordsworth, Dame Elizabeth (1888). Christopher Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, 1807-1885. Rivingtons.
  7. Wordsworth, Dame Elizabeth (1891). William Wordsworth. Percival and Company.
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