C. A. E. (Charlotte Anne Elizabeth) Moberly

Born in 1846, she became one of the important early figures in women’s higher education at Oxford. She served as principal of St Hugh’s Hall, helping shape the college in its early years and building a reputation as a capable academic leader.

She is also widely known as the co-author, with Eleanor Jourdain, of An Adventure (1911), a book based on their claim of a strange experience at Versailles that later became famous as the “Moberly–Jourdain incident.” That unusual episode has kept her name alive far beyond academic history.

She died in 1937. Today, she is remembered for a rare combination of achievements: practical leadership in education and a lasting place in one of literature’s most curious supernatural controversies.