Mary Paley Marshall was Alfred Marshall's wife and the founder of the Marshall Library of Economics, after Alfred's death in 1924. She was the first female librarian and an accomplished economist and scholar in her own right.
In 1871 Mary was one of the first 5 women admitted to Newnham College, where she spent 3 years studying for the Moral Sciences Tripos. Mary and a fellow student, Amy Bulley, were the first women to be allowed to take the men's Tripos. Even though Mary passed all her exams, as a woman, she was not permitted to graduate. Nevertheless she was invited to become the first woman lecturer in Economics at the University of Cambridge and she soon took over the teaching from her former teacher, Alfred Marshall.
In 1876 Mary and Alfred became engaged and they were married the following year. Due to limitations on marriage for Cambridge Dons at that time Mary and Alfred relocated to Bristol, where Alfred was offered a post. Together Mary and Alfred wrote the Economics of Industry, which was published in 1879 under both their names. The book was highly rated by John Maynard Keynes and other leading Economists of the day. Alfred, however, disliked the book and allowed it to go out of print. There was no evident protest from Mary about this. Later Alfred's own seminal work, Principles of Economics, was published in 1890 under Alfred's sole name. However, we are in possession of one of the proof books and we can see how much Mary contributed to the editing of this great work from her handwriting in the margins.
Take a look at a digitised proof book of Principles of Economics in Cambridge Digital Library here:
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/marshall/1
When Alfred died in 1924 he left many of his books and donated much of his money to the library. Mary acted as volunteer librarian and looked after the collection for nearly 20 years, until she retired at the age of 87.
Throughout her life Mary enjoyed painting and produced a bound volume of watercolours, which was passed to the Marshall Library for safe keeping.
