Katharine Stephen

Katharine Stephen (26 February 1856 – 16 June 1924) was a librarian and later principal of Newnham College at Cambridge University. Early life and family Katharine Stephen was born in London on 26 February 1856, the daughter of Mary Richenda Cunningham (1829–1912) and James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–1894), a judge. She was the niece of Caroline Stephen and of Leslie Stephen and the cousin of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Work Katharine Stephen worked at Newnham College, Cambridge. She first joined the college as Helen Gladstone's secretary, and worked with Anne Jemima Clough to teach working men on Sunday mornings in St Matthew's Schoolroom, Barnwell. She was appointed Librarian of Newnham's 'first purpose-built library' in 1888. She went on to become Vice-Principal and, in 1911, Principal of the college during the First World War years, and kept her seat on the Council after her retirement in 1920. Stephen sat for a portrait by her cousin Vanessa Bell but that painting is lost. The painting at Newnham College is by Glyn Philpot.