How to find them
London Road Campus
The red plaque is on The University of Reading, London Road Campus, 20 metres west of the tower under a covered walkway.
Whiteknights Campus
The University of Reading, Whiteknights Campus, Edith Morley Building (from 2017), main foyer. The building was previously Humanities and Social Sciences (HUMSS), and prior to that the Faculty of Letters.
Unveiling the plaque
As part of the University’s commemorative plaque programme, the circular red plaque to Edith Morley was unveiled 2013-2014. She was appointed professor in 1908, but had been a member of staff in the English department since 1901. The University Extension College Reading was originally located in Valpy Street and moved to the London Road campus in 1905.
The acrylic two-tone oblong plaque (Whiteknights Campus) renaming the HUMMS building was unveiled by Penny Mordaunt MP on 10 March 2017.
More information
Edith Morley studied at the Oxford Honour School of English and English Literature. She achieved a first class in her examination in 1899, but as women could not graduate from Oxford at this time, she was awarded an ‘equivalent’ degree rather than a standard Oxford degree. In that same year she began her teaching career at King’s College (now Oriel) Oxford, from which in 1926 she was granted an Oxford honorary MA degree.
She took up her teaching position at the then University Extension College in 1901 where she stayed for the remainder of her academic life, retiring in 1940. In 1908 she became the first woman appointed to a chair at a university-level institution in England when she became Professor of English Language. In this capacity she supported the Workers Educational Association and ran a series of lectures from 1912 to 1925. She is known for her comprehensive 1935 biography of the writer and traveller Henry Crabb Robinson. Gaining her Professorship was however a battle for fairness and equality.
Alongside her academic work she became a member of the Fabian society and joined Mrs Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, although not an advocate of violence. For her efforts coordinating Reading’s refugee programme during the Second World War she was awarded an OBE in 1950. There has been an annual Edith Morley lecture held at the university since 2015.
Credit: Dr Margaret Simons
