Eleanor F. (Eleanor Frances) Jourdain

Born in Derbyshire in 1863, Eleanor Frances Jourdain became an English academic and educator who built her career at Oxford. She studied at Lady Margaret Hall and also attended the University of Paris, later serving as Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, from 1915 until 1924.

Alongside her work in education, she wrote on literature, philosophy, and history. She is now most widely associated with An Adventure (1911), written with Charlotte Anne Moberly under pseudonyms, a book that grew out of their claim that they experienced something uncanny while visiting Versailles in 1901.

That mix of scholarship and mystery has kept her name in circulation long after her death in Oxford in 1924. For modern readers, she remains an unusual figure: a serious academic whose legacy is tied not only to college life and writing, but also to one of the most enduring supernatural stories of her era.