About Mary Augusta Ward
The daughter of Thomas Arnold, Ward took an active interest in social work for London's poor and in women's education. She embodied her views in her novel Robert Elsmere (1888), the sales of which enabled her to establish a charitable 'settlement' for the working classes in London, which pioneered childcare for working women.
She married Thomas Humphry Ward of Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1872. She founded the Lectures for Women committee in 1879 and helped establish Somerville College, Oxford, but was opposed to women's suffrage. In 1908, she led the Women's Anti-Suffrage Association, which argued that women were the country's 'moral force', with channels of expression outside the political sphere.
