(Sarah Emily Davies)dāˈvĭs, 1830–1921, British feminist, co-founder of Girton College, Cambridge. Educated at home, she became (1862) secretary of a committee to obtain the admission of women to university examinations. Out of this undertaking grew another committee, of which she was also secretary, to form a college for women. The college was organized at Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in 1869 and in 1873 transferred to Cambridge as Girton College. Davies was mistress of the college (1873–75) and its honorary secretary until 1904. From 1866 she was closely associated with the English woman-suffrage movement and was active in organizing the first woman-suffrage petition presented to Parliament by John Stuart Mill in 1866. She wrote Higher Education of Women (1866) and Thoughts on Some Questions Relating to Women (1910).

See D. Bennett Emily Davies and the Liberation of Women, 1830–1921 (1990).

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