ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals how female missionary culture shaped many of the first women’s colleges in Britain. It demonstrates how important the female missionary character was for the more religious women college principals, such as the evangelical Constance Maynard at Westfield College and the Anglican Elizabeth Wordsworth at Lady Margaret Hall, who saw themselves as fulfilling a missionary role and utilised the authority and emotional practices of the female missionary character to influence their students. From its study of college archives and student-edited magazines or newsletters, the chapter shows how college women used a shared commitment to missionary activity as an addition or an alternative to muscular Christianity to develop their college’s corporate identity and ethos. The chapter also argues that the development of a collegiate missionary discourse influenced missionary activity more widely in the late Victorian period as college graduates went on to work in religious settlement houses and foreign missions.
