Dorothea Ewart

Katharine Dorothea Ewart (November 26, 1870 – May 21, 1956) was a British historian and author of books on Italian history.

She was born at the vicarage in Bishops Cannings, Wiltshire on 26 November 1870, the daughter of William Ewart (1818 – 1873), vicar of Bishops Cannings, and his wife, Katharine, née Matthews (1840 – 1918). After her father's death, her widowed mother settled in Bristol where Dorothea was educated at Clifton High School for Girls. She won a Clothworkers' scholarship at Somerville College, Oxford, where she took first-class honours in modern history in 1893.^[1] She served as secretary for the Oxford Association for Mental Welfare.^[2]

On 12 December 1899, she married Horace Middleton Vernon, an Oxford scholar of physiology.^[1] The couple settled in Oxford and had five children, of whom a son and three daughters survived to adulthood.^[1] Their eldest daughter Magdalen and their son Philip both later became eminent professors of psychology.^[1][3]

Her first work was a biography of Cosimo de' Medici published in 1899 as part of Macmillan's Foreign Statesmen Series.^[4] In 1909 she published a survey of Italian history entitled Italy 1494–1790, part of the Cambridge Historical Series,^[5] which was reviewed as a welcome contribution to the subject.^[6] In 1909 she also wrote a short history of the Oxford University Museum with her husband.^[7] She coauthored Italy, Medieval and Modern, a History, published in 1917.^[8] Her final work was The Story of Italy, published in 1939.^[9]

She was widowed by her husband's death in 1951.^[1] She died in the mental hospital at Wyke House,^[10] Syon Lane, Isleworth, Middlesex, on 21 May 1956.^[1]