The women, Annie and Thena Clough, who form the subject of this study represent two generations of a family that is probably best known through the reputation of Annie's brother and Thena's father, Arthur Hugh Clough, as a melancholy poet giving voice to the Victorian loss of faith. Annie and Thena, however, are celebrated here in their own right as educational leaders who stood on either side of the loss of faith but who were united by their conscientious sense of social obligation. Both served as principal of Newnham College, Cambridge, where the author of this book, Gillian Sutherland, has long taught. But this monograph is far from being an institutional history. Rather, it tells the story of the two women in their family settings, showing, largely from private papers, how their commitment to the higher education of women emerged from the insecure circumstances of their homes. Annie, born in 1820, was the daughter of James Clough, a merchant trading between Liverpool and Charleston, South Carolina, where the little girl spent most of her childhood. Back in Liverpool, she wanted to be close to her poet brother and stoutly defended his Broad Church headmaster, Thomas Arnold. Debating the doctrine of the atonement with Arthur, she aspired to be part of his intellectual world but found it difficult to carve out a role for herself. Annie helped as a volunteer in a Sunday school and a girls’ day school before, in the 1840s, beginning to teach on her own account to help supplement the family income. In 1849 she spent a year in London, securing a professional training as a teacher, and then, while living with her widowed mother in the Lake District, set up a school of a more permanent sort. The death of her mother in 1860 made it no longer necessary for her to teach, and when in the following year her brother Arthur also died she moved to Surrey to help her sister-in-law bring up her young family. In 1866 Annie published her views on female education. From her experience, she argued that girls should ideally be taught in large schools, not in small units approximating to the circumstances of home. The teachers, furthermore, should assemble to hear lectures by professors of their subjects so as to ensure the highest standards of instruction. From this germ sprang Annie's ideal of higher education for women. Her notion was the inspiration for a North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women, founded in 1867 with Annie as secretary. This body was the launching pad for the movement for university extension that, in the late Victorian years, provided an avenue into higher learning for adults of both sexes. Annie's role in the council meant that she was the obvious person to lead the next crucial development in university instruction for women. At Cambridge a high-minded group inspired by the convictions of John Stuart Mill began lectures for women in 1870. One of their number, Henry Sidgwick, invited Annie to take charge of the boardinghouse where the women could lodge during term. Thus began what was to take the name Newnham College, which Annie was to head down to her death in 1892. The author brings out how tentative the initial developments were, with only a gradual evolution into an institution possessing its own buildings, land, and governing body. Over the whole process Annie Clough presided with serene optimism. Thena (short for Athena), Annie's niece, was born in 1861. She naturally gravitated to Newnham, where she became her aunt's secretary. After Annie's death, her memoir was written by Thena. A more morose personality than her aunt, Thena suffered from a deep-seated self-doubt that could best be assuaged by hard work. She threw herself into the administration of Newnham, becoming a skillful academic diplomat. In 1912 she refused the principalship because of an enduring sense of her own inadequacy, but eight years later she acquiesced in taking over the position. During her term as principal, Cambridge repeated its earlier refusal to admit women to degrees. Oxford granted the concession, allowing a wag to remark that if Oxford was to remain the home of lost causes, that was no reason why Cambridge should become the cause of lost homes. The issue was painful for all in the two women's colleges at Cambridge, but at Newnham Thena was stoic in adversity. Retiring in 1923, she lived long enough to see Cambridge permit women to graduate, from 1948, and then for more than a decade after that. The book chronicles the careers of two capable and influential figures, but it offers more than a personal story attractively written. It also provides an analysis of the way in which education could allow women to emerge from their private sphere to play a prominent part on a wider stage. It is an elegant and telling contribution to the social history of women.