Julia Elizabeth "Poppy" Kennedy (23 December 1839 – 9 December 1916) was a British classical scholar. She was a supporter of

women's suffrage Women's suffrage is the women's rights, right of women to Suffrage, vote in elections. Several instances occurred in recent centuries where women were selectively given, then stripped of, the right to vote. In Sweden, conditional women's suffra ...

and higher education for women.

Life

Julia, the daughter of Janet and

Benjamin Hall Kennedy Benjamin Hall Kennedy (6 November 1804 – 6 April 1889) was an English scholar and schoolmaster, known for his work in the teaching of the Latin language. He was an active supporter of Newnham College and Girton College as Cambridge Universit ...

, was born in 1839 in

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...

. She had four siblings: Charlotte Amy May Kennedy (1832‒95), Marion Kennedy (1836‒1914), Edith Janet Kennedy (1842‒1922), and Arthur Herbert Kennedy (1846‒85). The Kennedy family moved to Cambridge in 1867, when Benjamin took up the Regius Chair in Greek at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. Julia was taught

philology Philology () is the study of language in Oral tradition, oral and writing, written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also de ...

under

Walter William Skeat Walter William Skeat, (21 November 18356 October 1912) was a British philologist and Anglican deacon. The pre-eminent British philologist of his time, he was instrumental in developing the English language as a higher education subject in th ...

, and was described by John E. B. Mayor in 1871 as "an intelligent member of his Latin class for ladies". In 1877 she passed the Cambridge Higher Local Examinations. In the 1880s she gave lectures on Anglo-Saxon at

Girton College Girton College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college at Cambridge. In 1948, it was granted full college status by the univ ...

. In 1890 she was elected to membership of the Cambridge Philological Society. She was active in the women's suffrage movement. In 1908, Julia Kennedy and Rosamund Philpott were the first women to stand for election in the Cambridge Town Council elections.

Kennedy's ''Revised Latin Primer''

Kennedy's Latin Grammar was first published as the ''Public School Latin Primer'' in 1866, based on an earlier ''Latinae Grammaticae Curriculum, or a Progressive Grammar of the Latin Language'' written by Benjamin Hall Kennedy.Stray, Christopher. "Primers, Publishing, and Politics: The Classical Textbooks of Benjamin Hall Kennedy." ''The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America'', vol. 90, no. 4, 1996, pp. 451–474. ''JSTOR'', www.jstor.org/stable/24304887 A revised version of the ''Public School Latin Primer'' was published in 1888 as the ''Revised Latin Primer'' under Benjamin Hall Kennedy's name. However, the revised version was not written by Benjamin Kennedy himself, but Julia and Marion Kennedy: Julia wrote the philological introduction, and her sister Marion had provided the examples. Letters from Julia to the publisher concerning issues related to copyright raised in 1914 demonstrate the extent of their involvement, and highlight Benjamin Kennedy's reluctance to produce a revised version: "My father was only prepared at first for a comparatively slight revision...it was not easy to make him see the extent and far reaching quality of the alterations which were called for, both by the rapid growth of comparative philology and by the newer methods of teaching." Kennedy's ''Revised Latin Primer'' soon became the standard Latin Grammar in England, and is still in use. Kennedy's letters to the publishers of the ''Revised Latin Primer'' are part of the Longman Group archive held at the University of Reading. A radio musical about the role of Julia and Marion Kennedy in writing the ''Revised Latin Primer'' and the fight for women's access to higher education was broadcast on

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

in 2019, narrated by Mary Beard.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kennedy, Julia 1916 deaths 1839 births British women classical scholars Writers from Shrewsbury British Latinists