‘A Newnham Anthology’ - Review

Newnhame College, Cambridge.

This is a book, published for the centenary of the founding of Newnham College, comprises items written by Newnham students over the years, year by year. The early pieces tend to be from letters and diaries while the more recent ones were written for the book. The editor admits that she made no attempt to weed out duplication so some topics (e.g. college buildings, meals, gate hours) are mentioned rather too often. The best pieces are:

(1) Those written by the earliest students when they were not even members of the University and so formed a very tight community.

(2) The war years with the depredations of rationing and other shortages and the strangeness of a University with almost no men.

One aspect that I particularly noticed was that the early students (possibly up to WW2) enthused over almost every aspect of university life and seemed to study with a vengeance. To them, their degrees were an achievement that spoke not only of academic knowledge but of years of defying male communities that refused to admit that women were suited to or capable of academic work. But many of the later entries are by women who seem to have appreciated little about Newnham or the University.

Phillips, Ann (Ed).  ‘A Newnham Anthology’. Newnham College; 2nd Edition (1 Jan. 1988).