Alice Margaret Cooke
| Alice Margaret Cooke | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 18 September 1867 Hulme |
| Died | 26 January 1940 Manchester |
| Nationality | British |
Alice Margaret Cooke (18 September 1867 – 26 January 1940) was a British historian and writer. Cooke catalogued the books in the John Rylands Library and she helped in the development of higher education for women in Manchester.
Cooke was born in Hulme in Lancashire in 1867 to John and Eliza Anderson (born Jackson) Cooke. Following private education she went to Manchester High School for Girls where she was identified as academic. She was able to attend Owens College, Manchester (part of the Victoria University) as the college had allowed women to attend a few years before and she was able to live with her parents. The university had limited provisions for co-educational education. She liked history and she won the Bradford history scholarship in 1888 which assisted her in gaining not only a first class degree in history in 1890, but also the Jones fellowship. The fellowship funded post-graduate research which resulted in a publication in 1893 of what became the standard account of early Cistercian monasteries.
1893 also saw her become the first women lecturer working for Professor T. F. Tout at her alma mater and the first recipient of a master's degree from Owens College (part of the Victoria University). Cooke could not have been given a doctorate as the university did not award them for history at that time. Cooke also took various roles to assist female students who were following her path and she became a governor of the university and assistant tutor to women students in 1897. Cooke travelled and cycled and supported women's suffrage. A notable academic task was her compilation of an index to Earl Spencer's Althorp Library. This library had been the most expensive library ever purchased when the millionairess Enriqueta Rylands paid £210,000 for it. This indexing was undertaken at the request of Mrs. Rylands who was creating what would become the John Rylands Library. Cooke also sorted an autograph collection created by Thomas Raffles for Enriqueta Rylands.
In 1901 she moved to Cardiff where she lectured in the history department of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire. She was there until 1903 when she returned to cataloguing libraries. In this case it was Lord Acton's Library in Cambridge which consisted of over 60,000 books. From 1905 she returned to teaching, this time it was modern history at Cambridge University's Newnham College.
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