The Transitional Career of Mary Gurney (1836–1917): Work for the Reform of English Middle-Class Female Education at Secondary and Tertiary Levels

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article presents an understanding of the context, nature and significance of Mary Gurney’s educational career during the years 1863 to 1917. It is assisted in part by the conceptual lenses of feminist thinking and network theory. Despite neglect by past historians, Gurney’s work was seen by contemporaries as equal in significance to that of leading reformers who, like her, sought equality between English middle-class male and female education at secondary and tertiary levels. The article demonstrates her career’s transitional position between that of middle-class female philanthropist and professional female during the British Victorian and Edwardian periods of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It discusses the educational consequences of Gurney’s work before and after her death, including how its effects spread to other geographical and social locations, as part of the process of assessing its value.