Skeat was born in East Dereham in 1861. She was the first child of Bertha Clara and Walter William Skeat. She had five siblings including the anthropologist Walter William Skeat.[1] Her father was a philologist. She was a student at Newnham College in Cambridge from 1882 to 1886 where she achieved a first-class examination result in medieval and modern languages.[2]
She then obtained a Cambridge teacher's certificate and a doctorate at the University of Zürich. In 1890 she started teaching as a lecturer at the Cambridge Teaching College for Women. In 1899 she co-founded and became the principal of Baliol School for Girls in Sedbergh. She wrote plays and poems as well as academic textbooks. Her linguistic skills enabled her to create a list of modern English words that contained Anglo-French vowel sounds which was published by the English Dialect Society in 1884.[1] She also wrote a primer and two anthologies for use in teaching English. The school she founded closed in 1932.[2]
Skeat died in Sedbergh unmarried on 2 December 1948.[2] She was buried with her mother and father.[3]
