Warren, Sir Thomas Herbert

(1853-1930)

   Born near Bristol, he was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was an outstanding student, winning several prizes and graduating literae humaniores (1876). He was elected tutor in classics in 1877 and was president of Magdalen College from 1885 to 1928. So high was the standing of the college that King George V in 1912 chose it for the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1937. Outside the university, Warren's services were employed on several government commissions and committees. He was Oxford professor of poetry from 1911 to 1916, and he received honorary doctorates from the universities of Oxford, Birmingham and Bristol, and was created Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in 1914. He died in Oxford. In 1888 he published his edition of the first five books of Plato's Republic and two volumes of poems, By Severn Sea and Other Poems (1897) and The Death of Virgil (1907). Some of his poems: "A New Year's Greeting," "An Excuse," "Hesperides," "In Memoriam Alfred Lord Tennyson," "Lines for a Sundial," "May-Day on Magdalen Tower," "Natural Religion," "Richard of Chichester," "The Point of Spring."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Arthur QuillerCouch, ed. Oxford University Press, 1971.