Marion Kennedy

Marion Grace Kennedy (23 November 1836 – 11 January 1914) was a British classical scholar. She was a supporter of women's suffrage and higher education for women. She was born too early to take advantage of women's higher education and her father took the credit for some of her work. She helped to found and then worked for Newnham College, Cambridge, where her ideas shaped its constitution.

Life Kennedy was the second child of her family, and the first to be born in Shrewsbury, where her father was headmaster of Shrewsbury School. Her parents were Janet and Benjamin Hall Kennedy and her elder sister was called Charlotte and she too would campaign for women's suffrage. Her father was inspiring, but her mother was the organised one who managed the family's money. She was known in the family as 'Maisie'.

Marion Kennedy generously financed and was the executive secretary of the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Cambridge which became part of Newnham in 1880.

Kennedy argued for a change in the college's constitution in 1892/3. She wanted to ensure that the alumnae of the college should have real power over the future direction of the college. The college agreed to appoint "Associates". These people were initially found by asking former students to suggest the twenty people who could support the objectives of "Education, learning and research". and the associates have their own agenda. The associates have used their influence to raise funds for a fellowship. They also drafted the 1917 constitution which included the associates in the distributed power base of the college.

In 1913, there was a problem with the copyright on the book Revised Latin Primer which had been published under her father's name in 1888. Marion Kennedy revealed that the book was in fact written by herself, her sister Julia and two of her father's male students;

Aged seventy-seven, she marched in 1913 in a suffrage procession in London.

Kennedy died in Torquay in 1914. Her ashes were interred in Mill Road Cemetery, Cambridge with her parents.

Legacy Kennedy Hall at Newnham was opened in 1905. In 1923 Newnham College was given its own arms, based on themes taken from the arms of four families including the Kennedys.