Special Collections A=Z

Somerville College is privileged to own a number of special collections of national importance, as well as the archives that contain the official records of the college from its earliest times to the present day. While many of the collections are not yet available to search independently, finding aids have been provided for many in their descriptions below.

View our Visiting the Archives page to find out how to view items in these collections.

Amelia Edwards Collection

Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831-1892) is celebrated as the ‘Founding Mother’ of Egyptology. She was a writer, famed in her lifetime for her novels which included Barbara’s History (1864) and Lord Brackenbury (1880). She contributed short stories to…

Emily Kemp Collection

Emily Kemp (1860-1939) was a traveller, author and artist. She was born in Rochdale into a wealthy family (her father was a textile manufacturer) and she was one of Somerville’s earliest students, attending the college from 1881 to 1883. After Somerv…

Laura Liswood Archive of Women World Leaders

Between 1992 and 1996 Laura Liswood interviewed 15 women world leaders as research for her publication ‘Women World Leaders’, and subsequent documentary of the same title. She went on, in 1996, to co-found the Council of Women World Leade…

Margaret Kennedy Papers

Margaret Kennedy (1896-1967) read Modern History at Somerville from 1915-19.  She was celebrated in the 1920s and 1930s for her novels, the most famous of which was The Constant Nymph (1924), her second published work. It brought her instant recognit…

Margery Fry Collection

Margery Fry (given name Sara Margery Fry, 1874-1957) was the descendant of a large and notable Quaker family of chocolate manufacturers and philanthropists. Her great-aunt was Elizabeth Fry, the 19th century prison reformer. Margery’s father was a hi…

Mary Somerville Collections

Mary Somerville (1780-1872) was a Scottish polymath: a mathematician, scientist, astronomer, geographer, geologist and artist. Her interest in science stemmed from a fascination with the natural world, which began when she was a child in Burntisland …

Muriel St Clare Byrne Collection

Muriel St Clare Byrne (1895-1983) was an Elizabethan scholar, dramatist and critic. She grew up in Liverpool and was educated at Belvedere School, before coming up to Somerville in 1914 to read English. At college, she was described as ‘an awfully ni…

Percy Withers Collection

Percy Withers (1867-1945) was a doctor, aspiring author and friend to some of the most renowned writers and artists of the interwar period. Born in Sale in Cheshire, his father (who died in 1897) had been in the silk trade. Two of Per…

Philippa Foot Collection

Philippa Foot (1920-2010) was a renowned moral philosopher. Born Philippa Bosanquet, her father was British and her mother was American, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland. Philippa Bosanquet had very little formal education but attained a pl…

Vera Brittain and Shirley Williams Collection

Writer and campaigner, Vera Brittain (1893-1970) came up to Somerville College in 1914, shortly after the beginning of the First World War. She read English for one year before taking a leave of absence in 1915 to volunteer as a nurse. The …

Vernon Lee Collection

Violet Paget (1856-1935) was an author and critic. Under the pseudonym Vernon Lee, she published over 40 volumes on aesthetics, the Italian Renaissance, music, critical theory and supernatural fiction. Born in France to English parents, Paget was the…