Kate Norgate
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kate Norgate (8 December 1853 – 17 April 1935)[1] was a British historian. She was one of the first women to achieve academic success in this sphere,[2] and is best known for her history of England under the Angevin kings and for coining the name Angevin Empire to describe their domains. She was self-educated in the Victorian era when higher education was generally denied to women. Her obituary in The Times described her as "the most learned woman historian of the pre-academic period."[3]
Norgate was the only child of bookseller Frederic Norgate (1817–1908),[4] a partner in Messrs Williams and Norgate, and Fanny, daughter of John Athow, a stonemason and surveyor. Her paternal grandfather was the journalist and writer Thomas Starling Norgate, through whom she came into contact with a group of writers operating in Norwich. She became a friend of the historians John Richard Green and his wife Alice Stopford Green, who were particularly influential on her development. When J. R. Green died, Norgate helped his widow in editing much of his work.[5]
