Dame Elizabeth WordsworthDBE (22 June 1840 – 30 November 1932) was founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and she funded and founded St Hugh's College. She was also an author, sometimes writing under the name Grant Lloyd.
She was educated at home and travelled on European family trips; she was brought up in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey and in Stanford in the Vale in Berkshire.[1] She learned several modern languages as well as (self taught) Latin and Greek, though her knowledge of science and mathematics was meagre. She had a "persevering familiarity" with the Greek testament, as well as the Iliad, which she read at the rate of fifty lines a day with the help of a Latin translation.[2]:55
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 unable to afford the costs of Lady Margaret Hall. Today this is one of the largest colleges in the University of Oxford.[1]
In 1896, she was one of the women who was called to give evidence to the Hebdomadal Council on the question of whether women should be awarded degrees at the University of Oxford, making her one of the first women to appear before this council.[2]:107 She believed that women's education at Oxford should be as close to that of men as possible, although she did not believe in their being entered for University prizes, due to the risk of overstimulation.[2]:107 She received an honorary M.A. from Oxford in 1921, shortly after degrees were opened to women, 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)[5] and Ebb and Flow, (two volumes, 1883) under the pseudonym of Grant Lloyd. She wrote a song "Good and Clever",[6] which like her books came out of copyright in 2002.
