Early years Janet Elizabeth Hogarth was born on 27 November 1865 at
Barton-upon-Humber in North Lincolnshire, the second daughter of the Anglican minister Rev. George Hogarth and his wife Jane Elizabeth (
née Uppleby). She was one of thirteen children (of whom only eight survived to maturity). Janet "spent her childhood in a quiet vicarage in an out-of-the-way Lincolnshire town". Her older brother was the archaeologist
David George Hogarth. Janet's father permitted her to go to Oxford University "because of the reassuring fact" that
Elizabeth Wordsworth, the first principal of Lady Margaret Hall was "the daughter of one
bishop and the sister of
another". Hogarth undertook the
Literae Humaniores course, known as 'the greats', which consisted of Greek and Roman history, language studies and
philosophy. At that time the study of philosophy was exclusively a male preserve, so she needed special permission to attend some of the men's lecture courses. Female undergraduate students were required to have a
chaperone at lectures or other occasions when they visited a men's college. The chaperones were usually volunteers from a cohort of the wives and sisters of heads of college and professors. Since the 1870s, when married Fellows were allowed at Oxford, their wives tended to "be serious-minded and to constitute themselves the friends and promoters of women's education". The Oxford
Vice-Chancellor,
Benjamin Jowett, agreed to allow Hogarth to join classes at
Balliol College, where she attended lectures given by
Richard Lewis Nettleship. At the lectures Hogarth was required to sit at the high table of the hall, away from the audience of male undergraduates. She was occasionally accompanied by
Elizabeth Wordsworth as a chaperone, "who audibly dissented from the lecturer". Following the Nettleship lectures,
New College permitted her to attend the lectures on
Plato given by
William Leonard Courtney, who supported her studies by interceding with other lecturers on her behalf. After her final examinations in 1888 Hogarth graduated in philosophy, German and Greek, gaining a first-class pass in the
Literae Humaniores course.
Employment After completing her studies at Oxford, Hogarth found a part-time position as a philosophy teacher at
Cheltenham Ladies' College, a boarding and day school for girls at
Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. However, she found that she was not suited to teaching. In 1892 Hogarth was appointed to a temporary position as a "chief clerk" on the
Royal Commission on Labour, a wide-ranging enquiry investigating labour questions in Britain and its colonies, the United States and European countries. Hogarth was responsible for the general supervision of the women clerks and paid a weekly salary of three pounds, which was the equivalent to that of a male clerk, though not one with Hogarth's university qualifications and language skills. In later years she wrote of clerical work as "a soul-destroying avocation, from which any woman, let alone a woman of higher education, might well pray to be delivered". She remained at the bank for more than a decade. In early 1906 Janet Hogarth was employed as the chief librarian of
The Times Book Club, in charge of fifteen librarians. The Book Club had been established in September 1905 in premises in Bond Street under the supervision of the advertising manager of
The Times,
Horace Everett Hooper. It was designed to increase circulation of the newspaper by enticing annual subscribers with access to "a first-rate circulating library", making available a wide selection of books that could be borrowed for free or purchased at a significant discount. The Book Club proved to be popular with the public and in May 1906 it relocated to larger premises in Oxford Street. Jones ordered the staff to wear uniforms and instituted a policy of preventing the availability of books of which he did not approve. Hogarth responded to these restrictions by resigning. In 1909 Hogarth shifted from the Book Club to the offices of
The Encyclopædia Britannica in
High Holborn in
central London, where she was placed in charge of the female indexers for the
eleventh edition. In addition to her supervision of the indexing, Hogarth also wrote and edited hundreds of unsigned articles for the finished work. In December 1910 one of four dinners to celebrate the completion of the eleventh edition was held at the
Savoy Hotel in honour of the women contributors to the encyclopædia. The keynote speech, replying to the toast "The work of women", was given by Janet Hogarth, during which she declared that
The Encyclopædia Britannica "has given women the chance to demonstrate their rightful place in the learned world". The eleventh edition of
The Encyclopædia Britannica was published during 1910 and 1911, consisting of 28 volumes plus an index volume. As observed by the historian Gillian Thomas, Hogarth's education "enabled her to develop an independent professional life, which, in turn, gave her a personal autonomy and an enlarged private world" unimaginable in the context of the home life in which she was raised. Prior to the enactment of the 1918
legislation in Britain extending the vote to women aged over 30, Janet Hogarth Courtney and her friend
Gertrude Bell had been opposed to the extension of
suffrage to women. The
Women's National Anti-Suffrage League (WNASL) was launched in July 1908 to counter a growing political acceptance of the inevitability of female enfranchisement. Both Hogarth and Bell served on the executive of the organisation, with Bell becoming its first secretary. In her later years Janet Hogarth Courtney maintained a dismissive attitude to the female suffrage. In 1931 she wrote that during her "anti-Suffrage days... many of us feared that
Pankhurst militancy was going to wreck most of what professional women had won". in 1933 she described the female vote as "a double-edged weapon of limited usefulness", involving women in "the strife" of political parties, "yet gave them only a very small percentage of representatives in Parliament".
Marriage On 17 July 1911 Hogarth married
William Leonard Courtney, editor of
The Fortnightly Review and drama and literary critic of
The Daily Telegraph. She had been taught by Courtney at Oxford and later worked for him at
The Fortnightly Review. William Courtney's first wife had died in May 1907 "after a long and distressing illness". From 1913 Janet Courtney served as a member of the executive committee of the
Carnegie United Kingdom Trust. In 1914 a project to produce a "junior Britannica" was commenced. Courtney and her staff were assigned to produce a sample volume of articles from the encyclopedia proper, shortened and rewritten in plainer language and well illustrated with photographs and drawings. In 1916 and 1917 Janet Courtney was employed as an adviser on staff welfare at the
Ministry of Munitions. She was also appointed as a
Justice of the Peace. Janet and William Courtney collaborated in the writing of
Pillars of Empire, published in 1918. The book, described as "biographical sketches of men who have helped to make the British Empire", included illustrations by
Clive Gardiner. In early 1920 Sears, Roebuck and Company purchased
Encyclopædia Britannica and retained Horace Hooper as the publisher. Hooper proposed that a three-volume supplement to the eleventh edition be prepared, to include a history of the recent war, which was agreed to by the new owners. He met with Hugh Chisholm, who had been working at
The Times during the war, and offered him the editorship of the supplement. Chisholm accepted and hired Janet Courtney as his first assistant. Courtney was the author of the major articles 'Women' and 'Women Police' in the three-volume supplement of the encyclopedia (known as the twelfth edition), published in 1921-1922. In 1926 Courtney's
memoir,
Recollected in Tranquility was published. The book was her personal account "of the time when women were beginning to invade all kinds of new spheres of activity – by one who, although an anti-suffragist, was one of the pioneers". She was the author of a number of books of reminiscences detailing her working life and years at Oxford University. Janet Elizabeth Hogarth Courtney died on 24 September 1954 in London, aged 88. ==Written works==