Frances ‘Daisy’ Greville, Countess of Warwick (1861-1938) was an energetic British socialite, socialist and philanthropist, who founded the first women’s college for agricultural education in 1898. Based initially in Reading at Lady Warwick Hostel, where training was in association with Reading College, it relocated to Studley Castle, Warwickshire in 1903, eventually becoming Studley Horticultural & Agricultural College for Women. The College only closed its doors in 1969.
Another important node in the story of women’s agricultural work in the early C20th, Edith Bradley was the first Warden at both Lady Warwick and Studley Colleges, a horticulturist, educator, editor and writer. She contributed to, and later edited, the Women’s Agricultural Times (1899-1906?; first published and edited by Frances Greville), as well as co-authoring The Book of Fruit Bottling (1907) with May Crooke and editing the journal Farming. Greville and Bradley parted way in 1905, following a disagreement about Bradley’s management of the College (six other members of staff resigned with her). She moved to Bredon’s Norton in the Cotswalds at the invitation of the extraordinary Victoria Woodhull Martin and her daughter, Zula Maud Woodhull.
The five other volumes in Chapman and Hall’s The Woman’s Library comprised: Education and Professions; Needlework; Nursery and Sickroom; Furniture and Decoration; Cookery and Housekeeping, with this volume (VI) being the final one.