author
Phoebe Sheavyn
A pioneering literary scholar, feminist, and teacher, she built a long academic life around English literature and the place of women in higher education. Her work connects careful scholarship with the story of women opening new paths in the university world.
1 Audiobook
Higher Education for Women in Great Britain
by Phoebe Sheavyn
About the author
Born in 1865 and living to the age of 102, Phoebe Ann Beale Sheavyn was a British literary scholar and feminist who became a professor at the Victoria University of Manchester.
She is remembered as an early woman scholar in British higher education, and records from the National Library of Wales describe her as the first woman student to gain an honours degree from Aberystwyth University in the 1880s. She was also a founding member of the British Federation of University Women.
For readers, her life is especially interesting because it joins scholarship with social change: she wrote on English literary history while also belonging to the generation of women who helped make universities more open to women students and academics.