British poet Ruth Padel, shown this February, has resigned as Oxford University professor of poetry. (Sang Tan/Associated Press)

The woman hailed as Oxford University's first female professor of poetry resigned Monday amid a controversy over how she got the position.

Ruth Padel was the first woman to hold the prestigious five-year post since it was created in 1708. She was elected to it in mid-May.

The Sunday Times newspaper first reported that Padel had told journalists about sexual harassment allegations against her chief rival, Derek Walcott. Padel acknowledged Monday that she had emailed journalists about a 1980s sexual harassment allegation against Walcott.

Anonymous letters about the allegations were sent to Oxford dons ahead of the vote that led to Padel's election.

Walcott, a Saint Lucia-born poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992, withdrew his candidacy after the letters were circulated. He claimed the anonymous letters to other academics amounted to a smear campaign against him.

Walcott refused to address the allegations of sexual harassment, which were recorded in the book The Lecherous Professor: Sexual Harassment on Campus, by Billie Wright Dziech and Linda Weiner.

Padel, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, has said she did nothing wrong by alerting the journalists as the information was already in the public domain.

"I acted in complete good faith, and would have been happy to lose to Derek, but I can see that people might interpret my actions otherwise," she said in a statement Monday announcing her resignation.

Oxford University accepted Padel's decision and said that "a period of reflection may now be in order."

A new professor of poetry is expected to be named before the end of the summer.