The intellectual gifts, personal warmth, and wit of Elizabeth Wordsworth were first exercised within the circle of her own family. It was not until she was nearly thirty that close personal friendships with Edward Benson, future Archbishop of Canterbury (then headmaster at Wellington), and with Charlotte Yonge, a popular novelist of the day, encouraged her to exercise these gifts more publicly. It was also Edward Benson, a family friend since Elizabeth's brother John had served under him as master at Wellington, who encouraged Elizabeth Wordsworth's father to accept elevation to the episcopate at Lincoln, thus physically removing her from the confines of the country parish at Stanford. These expansions of Elizabeth Wordsworth's sphere of experience helped to prepare her for the administrative role she would play as the head of Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford. Much of what she has written followed inevitably from her position as educator...