Rachel Trickett

Mabel Rachel Trickett (20 December 1923 – 24 June 1999), known as Rachel Trickett,[2] was an English novelist, non‑fiction writer, literary scholar, and a British academic; she was Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford, for nearly twenty years, between 1973 and 1991.

She became a lecturer in English at the University of Hull in 1946 and in 1954 she returned to Oxford as a fellow and tutor at St Hugh's College.

Her friend Laurence Whistler designed the college's gilded wrought iron Swan gates, which are now by the Principal's house on Canterbury Road.

Her The Honest Muse: A Study in Augustan Verse was published by Clarendon Press, Oxford, in 1967.

Michael Gearin-Tosh wrote in her obituary for The Independent that "she had a wicked eye for the conceit of academics, their insularity and devious manipulations",[2] an attitude which made her a soul‑mate of Erich Heller.