Katharine Stephen

Katharine Stephen (26 February 1856 – 16 June 1924) was a British librarian and later principal of Newnham College at Cambridge University.

Early life and family Katharine Stephen was born in 1856 in London, the daughter of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–1894) and Mary Richenda Cunningham (1829–1912), daughter of Rev. John William Cunningham. Her siblings included Rosamond Stephen and Sir Harry Stephen. She was the niece of Caroline Stephen and of Leslie Stephen and the cousin of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. and worked with Anne Jemima Clough to teach working men on Sunday mornings in St Matthew's Schoolroom, Barnwell. She was appointed Librarian of Newnham's 'first purpose-built library' in 1888. She went on to become Vice-Principal and, in 1911, Principal of the college during the First World War years, and kept her seat on the Council after her retirement in 1920.

Stephen died of cancer on 16 June 1924 at her home in South Kensington. She was loyal to her family; every day she would either see her mother or write her a letter. Her aunt, Caroline Stephen, was another relative; she was a Quaker as well. Caroline came to live in Cambridge in 1895, where she evangelised to Newnham students. Caroline's final book contained a short memoir written by Katherine.

Publications French History for English Children (1881), under the pseudonym Sarah Brook. Three Sixteenth Century Sketches (1884), under the pseudonym Sarah Brook.