Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924)

Eleanor Jourdain was born in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, the eldest of 10 children of a clergyman. Her younger siblings included Margaret Jourdain, the historian of furniture and decoration; logician Philip Jourdain; and ornithologist Francis Charles Jourdain. Eleanor attended a private day school in Manchester and then went to Oxford University (Lady Margaret Hall). In 1886, she became the first woman at Oxford to sit for a viva voce examination (oral defense of a dissertation) in the school of modern history. After briefly serving as a secretary to Minnie Benson, the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Eleanor began her academic career as an assistant mistress at Tottenham High School and later taught at Clifton High School. In 1892, she and the headmistress of Clifton, Miss M.A. Woods, co-founded Corran Collegiate School in Watford, a private school for girls. By 1900, the school had 100 pupils, and Eleanor had become sole headmistress. She left the school in 1903 and moved to Paris, where she spent a year studying symbolism in Dante's Divine Comedy. She published articles in both French and English on her research and was awarded a doctorate from the University of Paris in 1904. She was then invited by Charlotte Anne Moberly, acting principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, to take a position there as vice principal. Eleanor went on to serve as principal of St. Hugh's from 1915 to 1924. Papers she gave to student societies were published as On the Theory of the Infinite in Modern Thought (1911). Her other works included An Introduction to the French Classical Drama (1912); Dramatic Theory and Practice in France, 1690–1808 (1921); and The Drama in Europe in Theory and Practice (1924). During World War I, she was commissioned to undertake translating and deciphering work for the government. She was among the first women to hold university lecturerships at Oxford, as Taylorian Lecturer in French, 1920–22, and in 1922 was the first woman to examine undergraduates in the schools. At the peak of her career in 1921-1922, she served as president of the Modern Language Association.

Eleanor also cultivated a reputation for second sight and dabbled in mysticism. She and Charlotte Moberly wrote a book together called An Adventure, in which they claimed they had slipped back in time to the period of the French Revolution while on a visit to the Petit Trianon at Versailles. The book was published in 1911 under the pseudonyms Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont, but the authors' true identities were known to acquaintances and some reviewers, although mostly hidden from the public until after Eleanor's death. The book was a bestseller and went through numerous editions over seven decades, but attracted much criticism and ridicule. An Adventure was adapted into a 1981 television film, Miss Morison's Ghosts. The BBC broadcast a 90-minute radio dramatization in 2004 and 2015. Eleanor's tenure at St. Hugh's ended in 1924 in her resignation over an administrative dispute. She died of a sudden heart attack shortly afterwards at age 60.