Caroline Spurgeon

Caroline Frances Eleanor Spurgeon (24 October 1869, India – 24 October 1942, Tucson, Arizona) was an English literary critic. She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College, Dresden and at King's College London and University College London.

Caroline Spurgeon is known as the first female university professor in London, the second in England. She was actually the first female professor involved in English literature, and the first fully accepted in England at all. From May 1900 she lectured on English Literature in London. She became a member of the staff of Bedford College, London, in 1901.

She was an expert on Geoffrey Chaucer and in 1911 wrote a thesis in Paris on Chaucer devant la critique, and in 1929 in London on 500 years of Chaucer criticism and allusion. In 1936 she settled in Tucson, Arizona, where she died, apparently on her 73rd birthday from undisclosed causes.

Spurgeon, Virginia Gildersleeve, Meta Tuke, Marjorie Williamson, and others enjoyed interweaving intimate relationships and shared their summers (see - Our Story)

Smart networking in the British Federation of University Women and with female counterparts in the more progressive United States helped her gain leadership positions in the restructuring of English studies in Britain (e.g., the English Association) as well as in the launching of the English literature curriculum at the University of London. Through her various professional activities inside her own department, she participated in the academic literary-critical renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was also an active militant in favour of women’s eligibility to academic degrees. She advocated for more opportunities for foreign women in British Universities. Her own appointment to a chair's position marked a turning point in the history of women's higher education.

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