Walter Raleigh (professor)

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File:Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh, Julian Ottoline Vinogradoff and unknown boy by Lady Ottoline Morrell.jpg

Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (left), Julian Ottoline Vinogradoff and an unknown boy, photographed by Lady Ottoline Morrell

Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (Template:IPAc-en; 5 September 1861 – 13 May 1922) was an English scholar, poet, and author.

Biography

File:Walter Raleigh.jpg

Bookplate designed by Robert Anning Bell

Walter Alexander Raleigh was born in London, the fifth child and only son of Alexander Raleigh,<ref>Template:Cite DNB</ref><ref>Template:Cite NIE</ref> a Congregationalist minister,and Mary (Template:Nee). Katherine Raleigh was a sister and Lord Gifford was an uncle. Raleigh was educated at the City of London School, Edinburgh Academy, University College London, and King's College, Cambridge. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles and President of the Cambridge Union in 1884.<ref>Template:Acad</ref>

He was Professor of English Literature at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh in India (1885–87),<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Professor of Modern Literature at the University College Liverpool (1890–1900), Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at Glasgow University (1900–1904), and in 1904 became the first holder of the Chair of English Literature at Oxford University<ref>The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th Edition. Edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press, 2000 p.836</ref><ref>‘RALEIGH, Sir Walter’, Who Was Who, A & C Black, 1920–2007; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2007 accessed 11 July 2012</ref> and he was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford (1914–22).<ref name="MCreg">Template:Cite book</ref> Raleigh was knighted in 1911.Among his works are Style (1897), Milton (1900) and Shakespeare (1907), but in his day he was more renowned as a stimulating if informal lecturer than as a critic.

On the outbreak of World War I, he turned to the war as his primary subject. Raleigh's correspondence during the war revealed strong Anti-German sentiment; one letter stated "German University Culture is mere evil", and added that the deaths "of 100 Boche professors ... would be a benefit to the human race".<ref>Chris Baldick,The Social Mission of English Criticism, 1848–1932. Oxford: Clarendon, 1987. Template:ISBN (pp. 80–89)</ref><ref>Paul G. Nixon, Representations of Education in Literature. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 2000. Template:ISBN (p. 71)</ref> His finest book may be the first volume of The War in the Air (1922), whose volumes II to VI (1928–1937, plus 3 volumes of maps) had to be compiled by Henry Albert Jones after Raleigh's death.

In 1915, he delivered the Vanuxem lectures at Princeton on "The Origins of Romance" and "The Beginnings of the Romantic Revival," and lectured on Chaucer at Brown University, which gave him the degree of Litt.D.

Raleigh died at the Acland Nursing Home, Oxford, from typhoid (contracted during a visit to the Near East) on 13 May 1922 (aged 60), being survived by his wife, Lucie Gertrude Jackson (sister-in-law of Catherine Carswell), three of their four sons, and a daughter. His daughter Philippa married the writer Charles Whibley. He is buried in the churchyard of the St Lawrence's Church at North Hinksey, near Oxford.

His son Hilary edited his light prose, verse and plays in Laughter from a Cloud (1923). Raleigh is probably best known for the poem "Wishes of an Elderly Man, Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914":

Raleigh Park at North Hinksey, near Harcourt Hill where he lived from 1909 to his death, is named after him. The Department of English at Aligarh Muslim University has an active Raleigh Literary Society, which regularly organises performances of scenes from Shakespeare's plays.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Bibliography

Anthumous

• The English Novel (1894)
• Robert Louis Stevenson: An Essay (1895); 2nd edition, 1896
• Style (1897)
• Milton (1900); 1905 reprint
• Wordsworth (1903)<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• The English Voyagers (1904)
• Shakespeare (1907)
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• Six Essays on Johnson (1910)
• Early English Voyages of the 16th Century (1910)
• Shakespeare's England : an account of the life & manners of his age (1916, with Sir Sidney Lee)
• Template:Cite journal Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy (1918)
• The War in the Air: being the story of the part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Volume I: "Air operations of the 1915 Gallipoli campaign; the Western Front in 1915/1916; naval air operations." (1922;<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> revised 1939)

Posthumous

• The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh 1879–1922 (1926, 2 volumes; 1928, enlarged); reprinted as The Letters of Sir Walter Raleigh 1879 to 1922 (2005, 2-in-1 volume)

References

Glasgow James MacLehose and Sons Publishers to the University Template:Reflist

External links

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