Dorothea Ewart

She was born at the vicarage in Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire on 26 November 1870, the daughter of William Ewart (1818 – 1873), vicar of Bishops Cannings, and his wife, Katharine, née Matthews (1840 – 1918). After her father's death, her widowed mother settled in Bristol where Dorothea was educated at Clifton High School for Girls. She won a Clothworkers' scholarship at Somerville College, Oxford, where she took first-class honours in modern history in 1893.[1] She served as secretary for the Oxford Association for Mental Welfare.[2]

On 12 December 1899, she married Horace Middleton Vernon, an Oxford scholar of physiology.[1] The couple settled in Oxford and had five children, of whom a son and three daughters survived to adulthood.[1] Their eldest daughter Magdalen and their son Philip both later became eminent professors of psychology.[1][3]

Her first work was a biography of Cosimo de' Medici published in 1899 as part of Macmillan's Foreign Statesmen Series.[4] In 1909 she published a survey of Italian history entitled Italy 1494–1790, part of the Cambridge Historical Series,[5] which was reviewed as a welcome contribution to the subject.[6] In 1909 she also wrote a short history of the Oxford University Museum with her husband.[7] She coauthored Italy, Medieval and Modern, a History, published in 1917.[8] Her final work was The Story of Italy, published in 1939.[9]

She was widowed by her husband's death in 1951.[1] She died in the mental hospital at Wyke House,[10] Syon Lane, Isleworth, Middlesex, on 21 May 1956.[1]