Constance Maynard

Constance Louisa Maynard, born in Highbury, Middlesex, on 19 February 1849 and died in Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire, on 26 March 1935, was a British educational administrator and a pioneer of women's education. She enrolled at Hitchin College for women in 1872, which became Girton College in 1873, and was the first woman to read Moral Sciences, meaning philosophy, at the University of Cambridge, earning second-class honours in 1875. After teaching at Cheltenham Ladies' College and co-founding St Leonard's School with Louisa Lumsden, she established Westfield College in October 1882, one of the first higher education institutions for women in England. She served as its first principal and Mistress from 1882 to 1913, teaching about 500 students. She kept a long partnership with Lumsden, and her unpublished writings and autobiography have been digitized by Queen Mary, University of London archives.