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Academic Women and the Institutionalisation of English at the University of Cambridge, 1898-1938 https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.124735 Rogers, Lucy Abbott, Ruth The development of ‘Cambridge English’ has become a fundamental part of the semi- mythologised origin story of modern literary study. However, existing narratives of the ‘Rise of English’ rarely incorporate any substantial discussion of women who taught, researched and studied at Cambridge in the early twentieth century. This thesis suggests that the relationship of women with the embryonic English Tripos has been overlooked largely because of the less straightforward ways they engaged with this subject. Sidelined from important decision making and curricular design, deprived of degrees and facing significant obstacles to publication, women adopted a notably wide variety of methods for reading and writing about literary texts. To more fully understand the nature of women’s engagement with the development of English (including the ideas associated with ‘Cambridge English’) this thesis therefore investigates many different forms of criticism, some conventionally academic and others less so. The texts examined include lecture lists, examination papers, notebooks, scrapbooks, novels, student magazines, memoirs, reference books, teaching notes, history books and satirical poems, alongside essays, reviews and monographs. Many of the figures and archival sources discussed have never previously received scholarly attention. The thesis analyses these sources to reveal the critical approaches of both staff and students and explore how these overlapped with creative practices and other developing disciplinary methodologies. The history of women and English at Cambridge runs parallel to the creation and early years of the Tripos. Approaching this history through a diverse range of forms and practices enables us to encounter women in the process of establishing what it meant to read literary texts in a professional academic setting, as a woman. Not all the women in this thesis taught English, or even studied it, but they all engaged critically with literary works and with the ways in which their male colleagues were attempting to institutionalise and professionalise the process of reading them. The thesis offers a series of case studies, featuring individuals or small clusters of women, each centred around a set of archival materials. Chapter One, ‘English Before the Tripos’, examines a selection of models of literary scholarship and academic womanhood enacted at Girton and Newnham before 1919. Chapter Two presents an ‘Alternative to the Tripos’ through historian Eileen Power’s uses of literary quotation. Chapter Three features several generations of Girton women who used processes of ‘Reframing, Rewriting, Reinterpreting the Tripos’ to assert a sense of control. Chapter Four goes ‘Beyond the English Tripos’ to discuss extracurricular experimentation as a form of literary criticism, focusing on the student magazine Thersites. Through these case studies, the project aims to complicate existing metadiscourses and histories of English. Moving away from polemicising and towards a more nuanced, practice-focused and archive-led approach facilitates the inclusion of women scholars and centres their own writing. This provides a greater insight into Cambridge women’s interactions with English than has hitherto been possible. University of Cambridge 2025-08-11 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) eng Jebb Studentship, Sarah Squire Scholarship (Hughes Hall), Faculty of English https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/395117 embargo 2027-01-09 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/865bab9f-0954-4665-bf25-4a9d50d9979a/download c3a8e0ef8ddd247c8386fb02a4c4e7ed https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/5f78f92e-0983-4fd7-933c-7e88b31a284d/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved Cambridge English disciplinary history English English Tripos female scholars Institutionalisation of English twentieth century University history University of Cambridge women academics