Edith Morley

Edith Julia Morley, (13 September 1875–18 January 1964) was a literary scholar and activist. She was the main twentieth century editor of the works of Henry Crabb Robinson. The house belonged to her grandmother, and the family rented it from her.

In 1908 Morley was appointed Professor of English Language at University College in Reading, becoming the first woman appointed to a chair at an English university-level institution. After she had addressed the committee of the English Association "interminably, her face radiant and moist, on the theory and practice of English teaching", A. C. Bradley commented to John Bailey, "It is a pity, besides being rather strange, that poor Miss Morley herself cannot write a paragraph of tolerable English". She held the Reading professorship until 1940, by which time the erstwhile University College had become the University of Reading. Her speciality was English literature, and for many years she regularly published a lengthy roundup of recent scholarship in her field under the heading "The Eighteenth Century" in the bibliographical review entitled The Year's Work in English Studies. She is known for her comprehensive 1935 biography of the writer and traveller Henry Crabb Robinson and as the primary 20th century editor of Robinson's writings. In 2014, the university held her up as a role model during its celebration of International Women's Day.

The Edith Morley Annual Lecture has been given by: 2015 - Laura Tobin and Rhianna Dhillon 2016 - Karen Blackett 2017 - Penny Mordaunt MP 2018 - Polly Vacher MBE 2019 - Laura Bates 2023 - Professor Nazanin Derakhshan 2024 - Dr Rhian Taylor 2025 - Mathilda Hodgkins-Byrne 2026 - Dr Alice Mpofu-Coles

The University of Reading's Humanities and Social Sciences Building was renamed the Edith Morley Building in 2017.

Books The Works of Sir Philip Sidney (1901) Women Workers in Seven Professions: A Survey of Their Economic Conditions and Prospects (1914) Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb, Etc., Being Selections from the Remains of Henry Crabb Robinson (1922) The Life and Times of Henry Crabb Robinson (1935) John Cunningham, 1729–1773 (1942) Edith Morley, Before and After. Reminiscences of a Working Life, edited by Barbara Morris, foreword by Mary Beard (Reading: Two Rivers Press, 2016)