Edith Thompson (1848-1929) was a historian and lexicographer. [1] She wrote "History of England" [2] the second volume of the "Historical Course for Schools", which was devised and edited by Edward Freeman, [3] with whom she corresponded regularly. [4]
She was also a prolific contributor to the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. [5] [6] Along with her sister, Elizabeth Perronet Thompson, she provided 15,000 quotations for the dictionary. [7] She also subedited the volume for "C" words and proofread volumes from "D" words onwards. [8]
Thompson was barred from university, as a woman, but did receive some recognition as an Honorary Member of the Bath branch of the National Federation of University Women. She and her sister, Elizabeth Thompson (1857–1930) lived at Beaconsfield Lodge in Bath. Elizabeth published a historical novel The Veil of Liberty, A Tale of the Girondins (1895) under her penname "Peronne" and A Dragoon's Wife, A Romance of the 17th Century (1907) under her own name.
Thompson was the granddaughter of Thomas Perronet Thompson, a notable abolitionist, about whom she wrote a biography that went unpublished. [9]
Edith Thompson is a major character in Pip Williams' novel The Dictionary of Lost Words , where she mentors a fictional goddaughter who works on the Oxford English Dictionary. [10]
Nancy Freeman-Mitford was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the London social scene in the inter-war period. She wrote several novels about upper-class life in England and France, and is considered a sharp and often provocative wit. She also has a reputation as a writer of popular historical biographies.
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess. She never married but became passionately attached to Russian painter Pavel Tchelitchew, and her home was always open to London's poetic circle, to whom she was generous and helpful.
Amelia Opie was an English author who published numerous novels in the Romantic period up to 1828. A Whig supporter and Bluestocking, Opie was also a leading abolitionist in Norwich, England. Hers was the first of 187,000 names presented to the British Parliament on a petition from women to stop slavery.
Wilton Abbey was a Benedictine convent in Wiltshire, England, three miles west of Salisbury, probably on the site now occupied by Wilton House. It was active from the early tenth century until 1539.
Arthur Frederic Basil Williams was an English historian.
Mabell Frances Elizabeth Ogilvy, Countess of Airlie, was a British courtier and author.
Thomas Perronet Thompson was a British Parliamentarian, a governor of Sierra Leone and a radical reformer. He became prominent in 1830s and 1840s as a leading activist in the Anti-Corn Law League. He specialized in the grass-roots mobilisation of opinion through pamphlets, newspaper articles, correspondence, speeches, and endless local planning meetings.
The English Dialect Dictionary (EDD) is the most comprehensive dictionary of English dialects ever published, compiled by the Yorkshire dialectologist Joseph Wright (1855–1930), with strong support by a team and his wife Elizabeth Mary Wright (1863–1958). The time of dialect use covered is, by and large, the Late Modern English period (1700–1903), but given Wright's historical interest, many entries contain information on etymological precursors of dialect words in centuries as far back as Old English and Middle English. Wright had hundreds of informants ("correspondents") and borrowed from thousands of written sources, mainly glossaries published by the English Dialect Society in the later 19th century, but also many literary texts written in dialect. In contrast to most of his sources, Wright pursued a scholarly linguistic method, providing full evidence of his sources and antedating modes of grammatical analysis of the 20th century. The contents of the EDD's nearly 80.000 entries were generally ignored during the 20th century but were made accessible by the interface of EDD Online, the achievement of an Innsbruck University research project first published in 2012 and repeatedly revised since.
Sir Egerton Bushe Coghill, 5th Baronet was an Irish painter.
William Hunt (1842–1931) was an English clergyman and historian.
Edith Ailsa Geraldine Craig, known as Edy Craig, was a prolific theatre director, producer, costume designer and early pioneer of the women's suffrage movement in England. She was the daughter of actress Ellen Terry and the progressive English architect-designer Edward William Godwin, and the sister of theatre practitioner Edward Gordon Craig.
Kate Fanny Loder, later Lady Thompson, was an English composer and pianist.
Fulshaw Hall is a country house, south of the civil parish of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.
Vincent Perronet (1693–1785) was an Anglo-Swiss clergyman of the Church of England, vicar of Shoreham and an early Methodist.
Juanita Frances, née Juanita Frances Lemont, married name Juanita Frances Schlesinger (1901-1992) was a feminist activist and a founder of the Married Women's Association (MWA).
Heather Josephine Child was an English calligrapher, heraldic artist, botanical illustrator and author.
Georgiana Charlotte Clive Chapman, Lady Chapman, was an English biographer and educator. She was a council member and college administrator for Westfield College in Hampstead from 1890 to her death in 1941.
Margaret Tanner born Margaret Priestman was an English social reformer. Priestman, along with members of hers and the Bright family, were important in the creation of some of the first women's suffrage societies, founded in London, Bristol, and Bath.
Vera Ruth Gordon Douie (1894–1979) was a Scottish librarian. She is known as the first librarian at The Women's Service library. She was an active member of the women's rights movement and her work was recognised with an OBE in 1967.
Hannah Chapman Backhouse was an English diarist and Quaker minister. Her work in America was influential in strengthening evangelicalism in American Quakerism.