author
C. A. E. (Charlotte Anne Elizabeth) Moberly
1846–1937
A pioneer of women’s higher education at Oxford, she was the founding principal of St Hugh’s College and helped shape its early character. She is also remembered for the strange and much-debated Versailles experience that inspired the bestselling book An Adventure.
1 Audiobook
An Adventure
by C. A. E. (Charlotte Anne Elizabeth) Moberly, Eleanor F. (Eleanor Frances) Jourdain
About the author
Born in Winchester in 1846, Charlotte Anne Elizabeth Moberly—known as Annie—was the daughter of George Moberly, later Bishop of Salisbury. She went on to become an English academic and, in 1886, the first principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she played an important role in opening university education to women.
Moberly led St Hugh’s for nearly three decades, helping establish the college during a crucial period for women’s education in Britain. Her career was rooted in serious academic and institutional work, and she remained closely associated with the college’s development.
Many readers know her today for An Adventure (1911), written with fellow academic Eleanor Jourdain after the two described a deeply unusual experience while visiting the Petit Trianon at Versailles. The book became famous for its claims of a strange encounter with the past, giving Moberly an enduring place in both educational history and literary curiosity.