Bertha Marian Skeat

Bertha Marian Skeat or Bertha Skeat (30 December 1861 – 2 December 1948) was a British writer and schoolmistress.

Bertha Marian Skeat
Born30 December 1861
Dereham
Died2 December 1948 (1948-12-03) (aged 86)
Sedbergh
NationalityUnited Kingdom
EducationNewnham College
University of Zurich
Known forfounder of school
Parent(s)Bertha Clara and Walter William Skeat

Life

Skeat was born in East Dereham in 1861. She was the first child of Bertha Clara and Walter William Skeat. She had five siblings including the anthropologist Walter William Skeat.[1] Her father was a philologist. She was a student at Newnham College in Cambridge from 1882 to 1886 where she achieved a first-class examination result in medieval and modern languages.[2]

She then obtained a Cambridge teacher's certificate and a doctorate at the University of Zürich. In 1890 she started teaching as a lecturer at the Cambridge Teaching College for Women. In 1899 she co-founded and became the principal of Baliol School for Girls in Sedbergh. She wrote plays and poems as well as academic textbooks. Her linguistic skills enabled her to create a list of modern English words that contained Anglo-French vowel sounds which was published by the English Dialect Society in 1884.[1] She also wrote a primer and two anthologies for use in teaching English. The school she founded closed in 1932.[2]

Skeat died in Sedbergh unmarried on 2 December 1948.[2] She was buried with her mother and father.[3]

Works
  • The Lamentations of Mary Magdalene – a play (1897)
  • Atalanta's Race – a play (1907)
  • The Crucifixion of Mary, and other Poems (1924)
  • Sedbergh Dreams (1930)[4]


References
  1. British Academy (2002). Interpreters of Early Medieval Britain. British Academy. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-19-726277-1.
  2. Kenneth Sisam, 'Skeat, Walter William (1835–1912)', rev. Charlotte Brewer, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 accessed 23 Feb 2017
  3. "Skeat, Bertha Marian (1861–1948), schoolmistress". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/58483. Retrieved 15 November 2020.
  4. Bertha Marian Skeat (1930). Sedbergh Dreams. Baliol School for Girls.
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