Ruth Padel — the first woman ever named to the 300-year-old post of Oxford University poetry professor — has resigned amid an e-mail scandal that’s rocking Britain’s literary world.

Padel, a great-great granddaughter of Charles Darwin, stepped down after it was discovered that she sent e-mails to journalists about old sexual harassment claims made against her competitor for the job, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, 79. The accusations were made by a student at Harvard University in 1982 and are described in the book "The Lecherous Professor." Similar claims were sent to about 100 other Oxford professors; Walcott later withdrew his name from the running for the professorship. Padel said today that she resigned after university officials said opinions over the situation were "bitterly divided."

"People wouldn’t believe in me," Padel told a press conference today. "I’m not afraid of people, but I wouldn’t want a faculty or a university to be divided. I care about poetry in that university and I don’t think it would be helpful for me to stand."

She wished the next professor — whom she hopes will be a woman — "the very best." But Padel isn’t saying she did anything wrong; she claims she sent the e-mails to journalists "in good faith" after students approached her with their concerns about Walcott’s past and that she had nothing to do with any negative campaigning against Walcott. "They [students] felt the concerns had been brushed under the carpet by Walcott’s supporters," she said, although admitting it was "naive and silly of me — a bad error of judgement."

The New York Times describes the whole ordeal as a "stunning turn in a saga of skullduggery that had opened a bitter schism in Britain’s literary world. Just as much, it has scandalized the ivy-walled cloisters of Oxford, exposing a culture of jealousy and mean-spirited connivance at sharp odds with the university’s public posture of academic tolerance and reason."

You can watch part of Padel’s remarks here.