A Lady Literate in Arts (LLA) qualification was offered by the University of St Andrews in Scotland for more than a decade before women were allowed to graduate in the same way as men, and it became popular as a kind of external degree for women who had studied through correspondence, or by attendance at non-university classes. In terms of academic standard, it was equivalent to the Master of Arts. Helen Bannerman, the children's writer, and suffragette Margaret Nevinson both had LLAs, as did the wartime nursing "heroine", Violetta Thurstan.