Elizabeth Wordsworth

Dame Elizabeth Wordsworth (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.

Life

Wordsworth was born in 1840 at Harrow on the Hill. Her mother was Susanna Hatley Frere and her father Christopher Wordsworth was a headmaster and later the Bishop of Lincoln. Her brothers were John Wordsworth, Bishop of Salisbury, and Christopher Wordsworth, a liturgical scholar. She was the great-niece of the poet William Wordsworth.

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.

She was the founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford in 1879 as a college for female undergraduates, on Norham Gardens in North Oxford. She continued in this role until her retirement in 1909, when she was succeeded by Henrietta Jex-Blake.

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.

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) and Ebb and Flow, (two volumes, 1883) under the pseudonym of Grant Lloyd. She wrote a song "Good and Clever", which like her books came out of copyright in 2002.

Works include Thornwell Abbas, (two volumes, 1876) William Wordsworth, (1891)