Keenly interested in the education of women, she made friends with Emily Davies, Barbara Bodichon, Frances Buss and others. She gave evidence to a Royal Commission on secondary schooling, based on her own teaching experience. After helping to found the North of England Council for Promoting the Higher Education of Women, she acted as its secretary from 1867 to 1870 and as its president from 1873 to 1874. Her scheme for peripatetic lecturers was the germ of the University Extension Movement.