The early registers of The Society of Oxford Home-Students record a high number of overseas members. 580 total students (of all nationalities) passed through The Society between 1888* and 1911, and of these, 117 were American women. It is interesting to see what an international presence The Society and the women’s colleges (or halls) were so soon after their establishment.
The Fritillary, an intercollegiate publication for the women’s colleges, has several articles from the late 19th Century written by students from the United States who describe life in the women’s colleges there.
By the early 1900s the lists of new students printed in the back of The Fritillary are heavily populated by names from the US, often pursuing further study after initial qualifications as indicated by the presence of their institutional addresses:
Publications such as:
Conditions of advanced study in Oxford University. American Club of Oxford. [1900]
Oxford as it is : being a guide to rules of collegiate residence and university requirements for degrees prepared for students in the United States of North America and in British colonies. American Club of Oxford [1902]
Were produced by the American Club of Oxford and provided information about University life for prospective students.
Elizabeth Kimball Kendall
Elizabeth Kimball Kendall studied in Oxford in 1885 and, according to a short biographical piece in In Adamless Eden : the community of women faculty at Wellesley, had already been teaching at Wellesley College prior to this. The photograph above (of our register) shows her career progression through the neatly crossed out ‘Assistant Lecturer’ to ‘Professor of History’. Her later Law degree at Boston and a Masters at Radcliffe, alongside the titles of her 1901 and 1903 books, reveal a continued correspondence with the community of Home-Students. The final ‘Died’ in the left hand column completing the entry.
A brief search on the Wellesley College pages in the present day finds her legacy in the job title: Elizabeth Kimball Kendall and Elisabeth Hodder Professor of History.
Katherine Lee Bates
Two years later Katherine Lee Bates, also of Wellesley College, appears in the Register. Of similar academic success, first as a lecturer and then as Professor of English Literature at Wellesley; the two women (she and Kendall) must certainly have known one another. Bates wrote prolifically throughout her life and enjoyed some fame as the author of the patriotic poem America the Beautiful, which she first penned in 1893.
She too is remembered by an eponymous professorship at Wellesley, but also by a street, school and the preservation of her house as a museum.
*Mandatory registration began in 1888
Further Reading
The Fritillary (Early issues available online: https://issuu.com/oxfordwomenscollegeshub)
Conditions of advanced study in Oxford University. American Club of Oxford. [1900] http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/OXVU1:LSCOP_OX:oxfaleph014177757
In Adamless Eden : the community of women faculty at Wellesley. Palmieri, Patricia Ann. [1995] http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/OXVU1:LSCOP_OX:oxfaleph011401324
Oxford as it is : being a guide to rules of collegiate residence and university requirements for degrees prepared for students in the United States of North America and in British colonies. American Club of Oxford [1902] http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/OXVU1:LSCOP_OX:oxfaleph015338538
This article was written and researched by Duncan Jones (Reader Services Librarian).