The fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Radcliffe will be observed with exercises beginning Friday at 10.30 o'clock in Sanders Theatre. Delegates from colleges and universities from all over the United States, Canada, England, and Japan, will attend the celebration and will march in the procession that will form in Memorial Hall at 10 o'clock.

The chief speakers for the occasion will be President M. E. Woolley of Mount Holyoke College, Professor A. N. Whitehead of the Department of Philosophy, and President Lowell. Bishop W. J. Lawrence will give the introduction and the benediction at the close of the ceremony. The Alumni dinner June 1 will bring the semi-centennial celebration to a close, upon which occasion speeches will be given by members of Radcliffe's first graduating class, that of 1883.

History of Radcliffe

Commenting upon the history of Radcliffe since its foundation the New York Times recently published an article from which the following extracts are taken:

Despite the existence of other colleges for women before Radcliffe, the collegiate education of women was regarded at the time of the college's foundation as a rather visionary proposal. The good will of the Harvard faculty had been won in 1878, to a considerable extent by the work of Miss Abby Leach, who had come to Cambridge and taken private instruction from Professors Child, Goodwin and Greenough in English, Greek and Latin respectively. Her sound scholarship (she later served as a professor at Vassar) leveled many objections to collegiate instruction of women.

Beginning at Radcliffe

At this time in Cambridge there lived Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Gilman, who desired for their daughter a college education equal to the best Harvard could offer. Having Miss Leach in mind, they took the problem of the education of their daughter and other young women to Professor and Mrs. Greenough in November, 1878.

In February, 1879, an announcement was circulated in Boston and Cambridge under the title of "Private College Instruction for Women", describing the provisions made and stating that "no instruction will be provided of a lower grade than that given in Harvard College." The circular was distributed with the signature of Mr. Gilman as secretary and the names of Mrs. Louis Agassiz, Mrs. Josiah P. Cooke, Mrs. Arthur Gilman, Mrs. James B. Greenough, Mrs. E. W. Gurney, Miss Lilian Horsford and Miss Alice, M. Longfellow. Under less favorable sponsorship and without the firm support of President Eliot of Harvard it would hardly have become firmly established or have survived long.

Four Rooms for a College

Even with such backing the enterprise was courageous. Today it is almost inconceivable that the college was started without endowment and that the resources of its backers were so slender. Tuition had to be $200 a year. $50 more than Harvard students paid, and representing a relatively much greater outlay today. Work was begun in four rented rooms in the house at 6 Appian Way. But thirtyeight Harvard instructors were eventually engaged to teach the twenty-seven young women who enrolled. The work was actually launched with the class of three in elementary Greek, taught by Le Baron Russell Briggs, who had been graduated from Harvard in 1875, and was destined to become the president of the new women's college.

The founders continued their devoted and untiring work. For three years Arthur Gilman, as secretary of the "Harvard Annex," as it soon came to be called, was sole executive officer of "The Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women by Professors and Other Instructors of Harvard College"

Radcliffe's first official designation.

Mrs. Agassiz, who had made and hung curtains for the rooms and who was untiring in her devotion to the work, was made president in 1882. Three years later she helped raise the $20,000 necessary for the purchase of the historic Fay House, and when in 1890 still more space was needed, she was again a foremost worker in raising the needed funds. She and the others of the group of seven saw the work gradually but steadily extended and prosper until, in 1893, under Mrs. Agassiz's leadership negotiations were diplomatically conducted for Harvard to take over the management of the annex property.

"X College"

The former anomalous relation of the two institutions was clarified by President Eliot in a letter of May 29, 1893. In effect, the president and fellows of Harvard University agreed that the institute founded by the society should have a name--"X College"; that they should be the visitors of X College, and that the president should countersign the diplomas of X College, which should also bear the Harvard seal, to testify to the equivalence of the degrees granted by the two institutions. Other rights were also granted by Harvard. Then in June, 1893, President Eliot suggested for the name of the proposed college that of Ann Radcliffe, Lady Mowlson, who in 1643 had provided a scholarship and was the first woman to make a gift to Harvard.