Arthur Gilman was a United States educator. He and his second wife founded the institution which eventually became Radcliffe College.
Biography
He was a son of banker Winthrop Sargent Gilman and his wife Abia Swift Lippincott Gilman. His ancestor Edward Gilman, of an ancient Welsh family, emigrated from Norfolk, England, to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1638. His father's wealth paid for Arthur Gilman's education in private schools in St. Louis, Missouri, and Lee, Massachusetts. Beginning in 1849, he attended the coeducational Chrestomathic Institute of Rye, New York. In 1851 he moved on to a school in New York City, where he remained until 1853. He joined his father's New York City banking firm from 1857 to 1862. His health becoming impaired, he moved to Lenox, Massachusetts, and devoted himself to literary and educational work. In 1870, he went to Cambridge, and became associated with the Riverside Press. In 1871, he became one of the editors of the American Tract Society in Boston. He and his second wife, Stella Scott Gilman, were the originators of Private Collegiate Instruction for Women, of which he became executive officer. The new school, which employed Harvard professors, was organized so that women could enjoy instruction equal in quality to the instruction that Harvard men received. In 1882 the school became the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women. In 1894 it was reorganized as Radcliffe College, for which Gilman was regent until 1895. In 1886, he founded and became director of the Cambridge School for Girls. Most of his studies were in the fields of English literature and history.
Works
He published Genealogy of the Gilman Family in England and America in 1864; The Gilman Family traced in the Line of Hon. John Gilman, of Exeter, N. H. came out in 1869. He edited Chaucer's works and other collections, collaborated in several volumes of the “Stories of the Nations” series, and wrote a number of educational works, chiefly historical in character, including:
