After John Stuart Mill’s death, his library was donated in 1904 to Somerville College,* one of the first women’s colleges at Oxford, founded in 1879. The students at Somerville, however, were not full students at the University, despite attending lectures, taking exams, earning qualifications, and becoming tutors and lecturers: it was not until 1920 that women matriculated and graduated at Oxford, being granted degrees and thus having their qualifications recognized. Cambridge women claimed only partial membership until 1948.
The popularity of women’s colleges in Oxford, London, and Cambridge grew significantly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as increased numbers of secondary and boarding schools for women were founded and expectations of the nature of women’s education changed. Despite intense antagonism from male undergraduates and the Universities at large, increased demand for places at the universities, continued pressure from women’s colleges and female students, lecturers, and chairs, the First World War, and success in the fight for women’s suffrage all aided in the effort to grant female students equal status with their male peers, and then, later, the removal of University-level quotas limiting the numbers of female undergraduates.
*Mary Fairfax Somerville, for whom the college is named, was a signatory to John Stuart Mill’s 1868 Parliamentary petition regarding women’s suffrage.
Sources
Levine, Philippa. "Taylor, Helen (1831–1907), promoter of women's rights." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. October 08, 2009. Oxford University Press. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-36431.
Garnett, Jane, and William Whyte. “Women Making History: the centenary.” University of Oxford. https://www.ox.ac.uk/about/oxford-people/women-at-oxford/centenary.
“History.” Somerville College. https://www.some.ox.ac.uk/about-somerville/history/
Fletcher, Sarah. “Ethos.” St. Paul’s Girls’ School. https://spgs.org/about/ethos/.
Sutherland, Gillian. “History of Newnham.” Newnham College. https://www.newn.cam.ac.uk/about/history/history-of-newnham/.
Image Source
St Hugh's College Scrapbook, 1888-1924, fol 12r. Oxford, St Hugh's College SHG/K/5/1. https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/07030a4c-4209-45d7-95e3-e2d9a50bb3f9/.