Mary Augusta Scott

Mary Augusta Scott (1851–1918) was a scholar and professor of English at Smith College. She was one of the first women to receive a PhD from Yale University, in 1894.^[1]

Biography[]

Scott was born in Dayton, Ohio, and received her master's degree at Vassar College. She studied at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, Johns Hopkins University, and Yale University; she earned her Ph.D. from Yale in 1894.^[2]

A professor of English at Smith College from 1902, Scott edited and published The Essays of Francis Bacon. She also completed Elizabethan Translations from the Italian, published in the Vassar Semi-Centennial Series in 1916, and reviewed by the Journal of Modern Philology in 1918.^[3] She was a frequent contributor to The Dial and other literary and academic journals.^[4]

Death and legacy[]

Scott died in 1918. The Mary Augusta Scott Papers, ca. 1870 - 1917, are held at Vassar College Archives and Special Collections.^[2]

In 2016, a portrait of the first seven women to receive Ph.D.s from Yale, which those seven women all did in 1894, was placed in Sterling Memorial Library at Yale.^[1] The women include Scott, Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Margaretta Palmer, Charlotte Fitch Roberts, Cornelia H.B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, and Laura Johnson Wylie.^[1] The portrait is the first painting hanging in Sterling Memorial Library to have women as subjects.^[1] Brenda Zlamany was the artist.^[1]

Works[]

• The Essays of Francis Bacon (editor) (New York, 1908)
• Elizabethan translations from the Italian (1916)

References[]