Life and Letters of Hannah E. Pipe

The writer Anna M. Stoddart (1840-1911) published biographies of Isabella Bird and the classical scholar John Stuart Blackie (both also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection) before this 1908 life of the educationalist Hannah E. Pipe (1831-1906). Pipe was sent in 1847 to Chorlton high school, run by William Ballantyne Hodgson, who mapped out for her a teaching career. This biography was written for, and at the urging of, Pipe’s ex-pupils, concerned to record her life ‘before it crumbles into oblivion’. She opened her first school in Manchester, but moved to London in 1856: Stoddart herself was one of her staff; music was taught by Sterndale Bennett, and science by William Huggins. The school was enormously successful, and Pipe also became involved in other philanthropic causes, being a friend of Octavia Hill and F. D. Maurice. This is a fascinating account of an inspiring teacher and educational pioneer.