Joanna Miller’s debut historical fiction novel, The Eights (2025), is set at Oxford University in 1920, beginning on the historic day that women are first permitted to matriculate and become full members of the university. New students Beatrice, Marianne, Dora, and Otto are assigned rooms on the same corridor. They form a tight-knit friendship group known as “the Eights.” As they navigate their first year, they contend with institutional hostility, restrictive rules, and the lingering trauma of World War I, all while supporting one another through the discovery of closely guarded personal secrets. The novel explores themes of Forging a Place for Women in Patriarchal Institutions, The Enduring Nature of Trauma, and Friendship as Shelter and Support.

Selected as a Reese’s Book Club pick, The Eights is grounded in extensive historical research, weaving fictional characters with real-life figures like the writer Vera Brittain and the pioneering academic Annie Rogers. Author Joanna Miller, herself an alumna of Oxford University, draws on her familiarity with the setting and her access to college archives to create an immersive portrait of a key moment in women’s educational history. The novel captures the social and psychological landscape of post-war Britain, from the widespread grief and psychological trauma affecting the student body to the societal pressures faced by the generation of so-called “surplus women” whose marriage prospects were diminished by the war’s demographic impact.

This guide is based on the 2025 G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain depictions of gender discrimination, sexual harassment or violence, child sexual abuse, sexual content, graphic violence, mental illness, bullying, emotional abuse, substance use, child death, animal death, illness or death, and suicidal ideation.

Plot Summary

On October 7, 1920, women are permitted to matriculate at the university for the first time in its thousand-year history. Four young women take rooms on Corridor Eight at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford: Beatrice Sparks, the daughter of the militant suffragette Edith Sparks, who is studying Philosophy, Politics, and Economics; Marianne Grey, a rector’s daughter who holds the only partial scholarship among the group and studies English; Theodora “Dora” Greenwood, a Hertfordshire factory owner’s daughter who is mourning both her brother George and her fiancé Charles after their deaths in World War I; and Ottoline “Otto” Wallace-Kerr, a former Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurse, who is studying Mathematics.

During the procession to the Divinity School, men from Balliol College taunt the women through a megaphone and knock Marianne to the pavement. Otto rescues the moment by bluffing about her connections to the Master of Balliol’s daughters. She shepherds the shaken group to the Good Luck Tea Rooms above Broad Street, cementing them as a foursome the older students soon dub “the Eights.”

Through Michaelmas term, the women settle into the rhythms of bells, chaperones, and the restrictive Intercollegiate Rules. On the fourth week of the semester, Beatrice’s mother Edith arrives to collect her degree and lecture the college on women written out of history. Beatrice feels both proud and bruised by Edith’s habitual cruelty, especially after Edith dismissed her claim to having been sexually assaulted several years earlier at a suffrage rally. During a picnic in the University Parks, the four witness a war veteran experience post-traumatic stress disorder in public, an incident that shocks them and brings them closer together. On another day, they are tricked at Brasenose by Arthur Motson-Brown, who stages a bag theft as a dining-society initiation to meet women. In the seventh week of the semester, Otto hosts a séance in the corridor. The Ouija board spells out “C-O-W-A-R-D”; Otto, furious, burns the board, then confesses that she considers herself the coward because she had failed her VAD probation at Somerville. Later, however, Marianne confesses to Beatrice that she also believed the message was for her.

Hilary term opens with a catastrophic discovery. At a Sheldonian lecture on the League of Nations, a Christ Church veteran named Henry Hadley hails “Buns” Baker in the stalls below, the same nickname as Dora’s dead fiancé Charles. Dora reckons with the discovery that Charles had faked his death, recuperated in Florence, and resolved it would be easier to hide his survival than break off his engagement to Dora, knowing his parents would have rejected their marriage on class grounds. This causes Dora to experience a mental health crisis throughout the rest of the semester. She skips classes, fails her qualifying examinations, and kisses a stranger in front of both Charles and her principal, Miss Jourdain. On the last day of the semester, Miss Jourdain suspends Dora for accumulated rule violations. Dora impulsively cuts off her waist-length hair and packs her trunk for Berkhamsted.

Otto, Beatrice, and Marianne keep working through Dora’s absence. Beatrice is publicly humiliated and ejected from a Russian-history lecture by a misogynist don. When she returns the following week, Beatrice finds that two of her male classmates have left her the previous week’s notes, along with a snowdrop and supportive messages to carry on. In May, Otto and Beatrice drive to Berkhamsted to retrieve Dora. After Dora shows them a self-pollinating species that no longer needs the male bee to reproduce, they persuade Dora to retake her exams and return to Oxford. Dora passes the exam from home and comes back in Trinity term. She subsequently begins receiving courteous attentions from George’s Jesus College friend Frank Collingham, a medical student who had once shown her George’s name on the college war memorial.

During Trinity term, there is an outbreak of influenza at Oxford. Otto and Beatrice climb through Marianne’s window to find her collapsed on the bedsitter floor; Otto, drawing on her sluice-room training, strips and washes her, and discovers stretch marks and scars across Marianne’s abdomen. Marianne later confides the truth to Otto: On Armistice night 1918, she had sex with a village soldier named Tom Ward. After she became pregnant, she married him at his hospital bedside in January 1919, and he died two days later of pneumonia. Her daughter, Constance Olive Ward, was born in August later that year, and lived at the rectory with Marianne’s father and her mother-in-law Olive. The arrangement for Marianne to attend St. Hugh’s had been brokered by Miss Jourdain, revealed to be her godmother, on the condition that she and Marianne could not acknowledge each other and that Marianne would rank first in her examinations. At the séance, Marianne believed she had gotten a message from her daughter.

Henry Hadley begins courting Marianne. During the sixth week of the semester, Henry joins an Oxford Union debate in sixth week, arguing for the place of women at Oxford University alongside Edith Sparks and student Vera Brittain. During the debate, Edith finally acknowledges Beatrice’s efforts as a student leader, citing that she was recently elected Junior Common Room president to support her argument. Beatrice is moved to tears. The women win by eight votes. Later, Marianne tells Henry the truth about her past. They continue courting one another, and Henry later visits Marianne in Culham, declaring his love for her.

Dora receives a long letter from Charles confessing that the war caused him to experience emotional repression. He acknowledges his cruelty towards her and announces his plans to leave for Cambridge. Days later, on Christ Church Meadow, Charles impulsively proposes to Dora. Dora refuses, however, lying that she is already engaged to someone else. During the final exams of the year, Otto spots a red-haired veteran she had once helped during the war and feels that she had, after all, done some good. All four of the Eights pass their exams. Marianne is awarded a full scholarship for the remaining two years of her education.

In the final week of the academic year, Otto drives Dora and Beatrice to Culham to surprise Marianne with the news of the scholarship. In the rectory garden, a two-year-old girl named Connie calls Marianne “Mama.” This prompts Marianne to reveal the truth the rest of their group, who accept her story with unconditional support. They drive up to Boars Hill at sunset to look down on Oxford’s dreaming spires. Dora resolves to pursue a relationship with Frank and reflects that despite her grief she had chosen her future. The group share an embrace before parting ways for the summer.