The Daisy, an early LMH publication

The Daisy was an early LMH student publication from the 1890s. The issues contain a variety of works, including articles on current and local events, reviews of lectures and performances, updates on the various College societies, short stories, poems and travel accounts. Every issue includes a summary of the latest Debating Society Meeting, citing the members who attended and the topic discussed. A particularly stirring topic from November 1890 was ‘the morality of artificial bids to beauty’, with some arguing that making the world more beautiful was praiseworthy whilst others claiming that all deceit was unjustifiable. Some of the longest works are the travel accounts, which include much detail on journeys through Romania and America.

A particularly charming piece from March 1890 is a short story about a young male student, Frank Clifford, who is in the throes of Finals. After a night of pre-exam nightmares, he is shocked to discover that the questions he has to answer are the ones he dreamt the night before. It is only in his viva that he discovers the professor had accidentally re-set an old paper and the exam has been cancelled, but he is congratulated on writing ‘some really admirable work in that subject.’ The author of the piece, Jane E. Hogarth, seems wistful that women cannot share Frank’s experience, and at the same time is slightly condescending towards her male colleagues who give such importance to exams. She begins her piece by saying: ‘Perhaps men of forty of fifty can afford to smile at the youthful arrogance which leads the boy of two-and-twenty to imagine the eyes of the world are upon him, and can confidently assure that in a very few years’ time these terrible examinations and their results will have sunk into nothingness.’

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The Daisy, an early LMH student publication