Pernel Strachey

Pernel Strachey or Joan Pernel Strachey (4 March 1876 – 19 December 1951) was an English scholar of French and Principal of Newnham College. Life Strachey was born in Clapham Common in London in 1876. She came from a large family led by Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey and the suffragist Jane Maria Strachey. Her mother was a friend of Millicent Garrett Fawcett who had co-founded Newnham College in Cambridge. Her brothers included Lytton Strachey and Oliver Strachey, husband of Ray Costelloe. The Strachey family background emphasised the life of the mind: "As a member of the large and distinguished Strachey family..., she shared its characteristically lively intellectual interests, wit and argumentative engagement with ideas. In manner she appeared shy and withdrawn ... but this veiled both kindness and a humorous regard for life’s problems." Strachey went to Allenswood School. In 1895, she went to Newnham College, one of the two new women's colleges at the University of Cambridge. After first studying history, she transferred to Modern and Medieval Languages, as a scholar of early French. She studied at Paris, and by 1900 she was lecturing at Royal Holloway College in London. Strachey returned to Newnham College in 1905 as lecturer in French and Romance languages, becoming Director of Studies in modern and medieval languages in 1917. From 1909 she was heavily involved in administrative work for the college. The existence of women's educational establishments at Cambridge was still controversial, and women could not yet receive Cambridge degrees. Strachey played a leading role in the campaign for degrees for women, but it would not succeed during her time at Cambridge.