Pudding Seminar: Ann Kennedy Smith, 'Newnham College Library 1871-1897 and Mary Paley Marshall’s 1944 book bequest’

Mary Paley Marshall (1854-1944, NC 1871) was not just one of Newnham’s first students but also its first librarian, responsible for its box of books. By 1875, the college library had grown and moved to a ‘moderate-sized’ common-room in Old Hall. It acted as a magnet for visitors curious about higher education for women, including George Eliot, William Gladstone and John Ruskin. After women won the right to take University examinations in 1881, a new era for Newnham’s library began, with a deliberate collection development strategy aimed at providing students with all books needed for the Tripos.

This talk explores the growth of the college library, up to the opening of the Basil Champneys-designed building in 1897, in the context of the steady shrinking of women’s access to the University Library during this period. Paley Marshall campaigned for equal access to the university’s spaces and later co-founded the Marshall Library of Economics on that basis. When she died in 1944, she left her personal collection of books to Newnham including a rare, annotated copy of her only book, The Economics of Industry (1879). This talk is about how Paley Marshall’s book bequest throws light on the story of women’s education at Cambridge.

Dr Ann Kennedy Smith is a writer and researcher based in Cambridge. She studied French and German at Trinity College Dublin before moving to Queens’ College Cambridge for her Ph.D. in French literature. She worked in academic publishing and as a tutor in continuing education before turning to life-writing and gaining her Master’s in Creative Writing (with distinction) from U.E.A in 2015. Since then, her essays and reviews have been published in the TLS, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the Journal of Victorian Culture and History Today among others. She’s currently researching a book on 19th-20th century Cambridge women’s networks and writes a Substack called Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society:  https://akennedysmith.substack.com/ She is a Fellow Commoner and member of the Art Committee of Clare Hall, Cambridge.