Annie M.A.H. Rogers and the admission of women to the University of Oxford : a study of family, society and reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

This thesis examines the career of Annie Rogers in relation to the movement for the admission of women to the University of Oxford. It shows that a family had an influence on the reform of a university and on the development of the professional class. It consists of two sections. The first part examines the intellectual and social formation of Annie Rogers' family in the Oxford context and its influence on her in the type of role she played. An account and analysis of her role in the admission of women to Oxford University, with an examination and comparison of the parts some other people played in it, forms the second, and larger part of the thesis.

Extensive research has been undertaken into a large quantity of unpublished papers of the Rogers family housed at the Bodleian Library, the British Library and elsewhere, in addition to sources at Oxford relating to Annie Rogers, and the movement for the admission of women to the University.

The history of this professional, middle-class, political, academic family runs parallel with the development of the professional middle-class, from the end of the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth. It influenced Annie Rogers in the kind of person she became and the type of role she adopted in the campaign for the admission of women to the University of Oxford. Her particular strategies played a significant part in obtaining membership of the University for women, thereby contributing to their admittance to the professions and to senior posts within them.