 While at Cambridge Stebbing developed an interest in philosophy, apparently after happening on a copy of F. H. Bradley’s Appearance and Reality (1893). After completing her studies in History she took the first part of the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge and then moved to King’s College London to take an MA in Moral Science, graduating in 1912. After various short-term and part-time posts teaching in schools and universities, she was appointed to a lectureship at Bedford College for women, in the University of London, in 1920. In 1933 she made the national newspapers when she became the first woman in the UK to be appointed to a full professorship in philosophy, again at Bedford College. (Bedford College became coeducational in the 1960s but was merged with Royal Holloway College in 1985, though the philosophers there moved to King’s College London, which now has an established chair of philosophy named after her.) During the late 1930s and early 1940s she knew, or worked or corresponded with, many of the major figures in mid-twentieth century philosophy. At the same time she devoted a great deal of time, influence, and personal income, to securing the safety of refugees from Germany and Nazi occupied countries: both exiled scholars and orphaned or fugitive children. However, her health continued to deteriorate. She suffered and apparently recovered from one bout of cancer, but the cancer returned, and she died in 1943 at the age of 57.