Geraldine Hodgson

Geraldine Emma Hodgson (19 May 1865 – 3 December 1937) was an English promoter of teacher training, a prolific author and a suffragist. The "Hodgson Affair" saw her dismissed from University College, Bristol.

Life Hodgson was born in Brighton in 1865. She was educated at Newnham College, Cambridge, where she would have gained a first if Cambridge had awarded degrees to women in 1889. She had a wide-ranging career in teaching. She worked briefly in Liverpool at Blackburne House School and as secretary to Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle leaving both jobs in 1890. In the following year she was mistress-in-charge at Newcastle upon Tyne preparatory school and she stayed there until she became deputy head of Leamington High School for Girls in 1894. In 1897 she moved to Wales to lecture on English literature at University College, Aberystwyth and stayed until 1899. In the following year her debut novel, Antony Delaval, LL.D., was published.

Hodgson began work at University College, Bristol in 1902. She completed her BA degree in 1904 and published several notable works. She received a Doctor of Literature in 1909 from Trinity College, Dublin.

Ripon Hodgson completed her career in Yorkshire where she was vice principal at the Ripon and Wakefield and Bradford Diocesan Training College until her retirement to Bristol. The books she published during this period mainly had a religious theme and she was an active supporter of the Dioscese of Ripon.

The poet, James Elroy Flecker's contributions and short life was described by Hodgson in 1925. She summarised his contribution in her book Life of James Elroy Flecker as "singular in our literature". This comment (and her book in general) received a damning review in the admittedly purposely combative Calendar of Modern Letters; it is signed "BH" and was therefore probably written by Bertram Higgins.

Hodgson died in Clifton in 1937. Across the forest and far away, 1911 Studies in French Education from Rabelais to Rousseau, 1908 Rationalist English educators, 1912 In the Way of the Saints, 1913 A Study in Illumination, after 1913 The Teacher's Montaigne, 1915 Criticism at a venture, 1919 English Mystics, 1922 Life of James Elroy Flecker, 1925 (Richard) Rolle and "Our daily work, 1929