The Eights by Joanna Miller

I thoroughly enjoyed this historical novel set at Oxford University in 1920 and 1921. The Eights are four women entering St. Hugh’s College at Oxford. They are in the first group of women to matriculate at Oxford. Before 1920, women could study at Oxford but weren’t awarded degrees. World War I has been over for almost two years and women over 30 now get to vote in Great Britain.

Eight is the group’s corridor number. Beatrice is very tall, and her mother is a famous suffragist. Beautiful Dora is still mourning her brother and fiancé and struggles a bit with math. Otto (Ottoline) is brilliant at math, wealthy, the youngest of four sisters and doesn’t get on with her mother at all. Otto smokes, drinks, and likes to bend the rules. Marianne is devoted to her father, a rector, and goes home every other weekend to help out with his church work. She needs to do well on her exams to get a scholarship in English, and hopes to become a teacher.

The male Oxford students are not a very welcoming bunch. They tease and play pranks, though some are charmed by Dora and Otto. The reader is immersed into college life along with the Eights, and Oxford is lovingly described along with the many rules the women must follow and the mediocre food. There are a few flashbacks to their lives during the war. This memorable first novel makes me want to reread Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers, set at Oxford a decade later, or Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. More, please!

Brenda