Raleigh, Sir Walter Alexander

(1861-1922)

   Born in London, the son of a Congregationalist minister, his education was split between London and Edinburgh and he graduated B.A. from University College, London, in 1881. Although appointed the first professor of English literature in the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College, Aligarh, India, in 1885, he was invalided home in April 1887. After that he held the chairs at Liverpool and Glasgow. He was the first to hold the chair of English literature, Oxford University, from 1904, which in 1914 became the Merton chair of English literature. He was knighted in 1911. He died of typhoid fever contracted abroad and was buried at Ferry Hinksey, near Oxford. He published books on John Milton, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, and English voyages of exploration in the sixteenth century. He wrote the first official volume of The War in the Air (1922). Some of his poems: "Attend My Words, My Gentle Knave," "How Far Is It to London?" "Johannesburg, New Year, 1896," "Ode to the Glasgow Ballad Club," "The Battle Hymn of Kensit's Men," "The Haunted House," "The Lie," "Wishes of an Elderly Man."

   Sources: A Sacrifice of Praise: An Anthology of Christian Poetry in English from Caedmon to the Mid-Twentieth Century. James H. Trott, ed. Cumberland House Publishing, 1999. Biography of Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (http://epona.lib.ed.ac.uk:1822/isaar/P0299.html). Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. The Chatto Book of Love Poetry. John Fuller, ed. Chatto and Windus, 1990. The CherryTree. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Phoenix House, 1959. 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 Complete Works of C.S. Calverley. G. Bell and Sons, 1926. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. What Cheer: An Anthology of American and British Humorous and Witty Verse. David McCord, ed. Coward-McCann, 1945.