One of the chief difficulties in writing the history of a comparatively young institution, and one raised by the labours, forethought, and sacrifices of many "pious founders and benefactors" is that the range of view possible to any former student and teacher must necessarily be limited. I have felt deep regret in realizing how many honoured helpers have—for lack of space—not even been mentioned. Similarly, among the former students whose labours, scientific, literary, and practical, have brought credit to the College, I have necessarily shown most appreciation of those with whose work and influence I have been personally best acquainted. Every past student will have to supplement the story with recollections from her own experience.

I trust that, at least, I shall have brought home to many the conviction that Newnham College is unique, in the character and motives of its first founders, in the steady devotion to its best interests of successive governors, teachers and students, as also in its relations—complicated, but near, we may hope, to a solution—with the University under the protecting shadow of which it has grown to prosperity. My hope for this little work is that, besides helping to justify the existence of the College in the eyes of the world, it may in some measure preserve in its members the knowledge of our best traditions in the past and inspire a confident hope for the future.

ALICE GARDNER.

Bristol, April, 1921.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I.Introductory. Newnham College in Idea. 1871-1880[1]
II.Newnham College in Adolescence. 1880-1881[33]
III.Newnham College in Progress. 1881-1892[57]
IV.Newnham College in Progress. 1892-1900.
Principalship of Mrs. Sidgwick[84]
V.Newnham College in Progress. 1900-1914[109]
Epilogue. 1914 and After[135]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Professor Henry Sidgwick. (Photogravure Plate.)Frontispiece
From a photograph by Mrs. F. W. H. Myers.
FACING PAGE
Miss Anne J. Clough and the First Five Students[2]
Miss Marion Kennedy[18]
Merton Hall, 1872-1874[26]
Miss Anne J. Clough. (Photogravure Plate.)[54]
From a photograph by Mrs. F. W. H. Myers.
Mrs. Henry Sidgwick[72]
From the portrait by J. J. Shannon, R.A.
Newnham College[86]
The Entrance Gates.
Newnham College, 1920[100]
General View of the Building and Grounds.
Miss Katharine Stephen[112]
Miss B. A. Clough[138]