Alice Gardner

Alice Gardner (26 April 1854 – 11 November 1927) was an English historian. Her publications included a history of Newnham College, Cambridge.

Life Gardner was born in Hackney, London, in 1854. She was one of six children and two her brother Ernest Arthur Gardner and Percy Gardner were noted archaeologists. At first she was educated at home but she then went to a school at Laleham created by Hannah Pipe in 1869. She went on to Newnham College in Cambridge in 1876.

She wrote and published a number of important books. The first was Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher and Bishop which was her debut published by the SPCK in 1885. Ten years later she published Julian: Emperor and Philosopher. Studies in John the Scot was published in 1900

After she left college she taught in Plymouth and Bedford College before she returned to lead her alma mater's history department until she first retired in 1914. as their teaching staff had been drafted to war work. She wanted this university to aspire to Cambridge's older standards. In thanks she was awarded an MA degree in 1918 and she became a reader at Bristol in 1920. Cambridge was not yet authorised to award a woman a degree, but Newnham's Principal, Anne Clough, supported her research in Asia Minor and Bulgaria.

Gardner died in Warneford Hospital in Oxford in 1927.

Works Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher and Bishop, 1885, Julian: Emperor and Philosopher, 1895 Studies in John the Scot, 1900 Theodore of Studium: his Life and Times, 1905 The Lascarids of Nicaea, 1912 A Short History of Newnham College, Cambridge, 1921