Caroline Frances Eleanor Spurgeon (24 October 1869, India – 24 October 1942, Tucson, Arizona) was an English literary critic. In 1913, she was appointed Hildred Carlisle Professor of English at the University of London and became head of the Department of English at Bedford College, London. She was the first woman to be awarded a chair at the University of London, and only the third in Britain (after Edith Morley and Millicent Mackenzie). She co-founded the International Federation of University Women with Virginia Gildersleeve. Life Caroline Spurgeon was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College, Dresden and at King's College London and University College London. She is known as the first female university professor in London, the second in England. She was the first female professor of English Literature (Edith Morley was given the inaccurate title "Professor of English Language"). From May 1900, she lectured on English Literature in London. She became a member of the staff of Bedford College, London, in 1901, and successfully competed for the newly created chair for English literature in 1913. She was an expert on William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer. Her thesis, published in 1911 in Paris, was on Chaucer devant la critique, and in 1929 in London on 500 years of Chaucer criticism and allusion. Her most famous work, Shakespeare's Imagery and What it Tells Us (1935) is a methodologically innovative compendium and analysis of poetic images. In 1936, she settled in Tucson, Arizona, where she died, on her 73rd birthday from cerebral arteriosclerosis. After World War II, her "intimate friend" Virginia Gildersleeve moved her body to be buried alongside her longtime companion Lilian Mary Clapham (1871 – 21 December 1935) at Alciston Parish Church, Alciston, United Kingdom. English studies Smart networking in the British Federation of University Women and with female counterparts in the more progressive United States helped her gain leadership positions in the restructuring of English studies in Britain (e.g., the English Association) as well as in the launching of the English literature curriculum at the University of London. Through her various professional activities inside her own department, she participated in the academic literary-critical renaissance of the 1920s and early 1930s. She was also an active militant in favour of women's eligibility to academic degrees. She advocated for more opportunities for foreign women in British universities. Her own appointment to a professorial chair marked a turning point in the history of women's