Intellectual Education and its Influence on the Character and Happiness of Women

The Shirreff sisters, Emily (1814-97) and Maria (later Grey; 1816-1906) were pioneers in the field of education for girls in the wider context of women’s rights. They jointly wrote the influential Thoughts on Self-Culture, Addressed to Women (1850), and Emily was briefly the principal of the college at Hitchin which became Girton College, Cambridge. The sisters founded the Girls’ Public Day School Company in 1872; by 1905 it had opened 37 girls’ schools across Britain. This 1862 second edition of Emily’s book on intellectual education contains no alterations from the original of 1858. It considers the theory and purpose of education, and the particular issues of its application to girls, before suggesting appropriate curricula (including advice on the care of health and morals) for each age group from seven to eighteen, with a final chapter on life after the classroom and ‘some peculiarities of woman’s social position’.