Arthur Woollgar Verrall(5 February 1851,Brighton– 18 June 1912,Cambridge) was a British classics scholar associated withTrinity College, Cambridge,and the first occupant of theKing Edward VII Chair of English.He was noted for his translations and for his challenging, unorthodox interpretations of the Greek dramatists, such as his commentary onAgamemnon;his detractors found his readings contorted and too ingenious, too often overlooking obvious explanations in favour of the convoluted, and his published work is nowadays not highly regarded.[1]After his death, admirersM. A. Bayfieldand J. D. Duff edited Verrall'sCollected Literary Essays. Classical and ModernandCollected Essays in Greek and Latin Scholarship1914. Among his publications,Euripidesthe Rationalistwas highly influential. He was a member of theCambridge Apostles,a secret society, from 1871.
Life
editArthur Woollgar Verrall was the son of a solicitor.[2]He was educated atTwyford School,Wellington College,andTrinity College, Cambridge,where he graduated BA as 2nd Classic in 1872.[3]
Elected a fellow of Trinity in 1874, he was a College Lecturer from 1877 to 1911. In February 1911, he was appointed to fill the new King Edward VII professorship of literature at Cambridge, which had been endowed byHarold Harmsworth.[2]A Trinity Tutor from 1889 to 1899; he was tutor toAleister Crowley.
He marriedMargaret De Gaudrion Merrifield,(born 21 December 1857, died 2 July 1916) in 1882. His wife, a lecturer in classics atNewnham College,gained more fame through her psychic researches — an interest Arthur shared[4]— and as amedium.She was a member of a Cambridge group who were early explorers ofSpiritualismandautomatic writing.[5]Their daughter Helen married William Henry Salter, who was later President of theSociety for Psychical Research(1947–48). Mother and daughter were among mediums involved in thePalm Sunday Case,in which messages from Mary Catherine Lyttleton (who died on 21 March 1875) were supposedly transmitted by automatic writing to her loverArthur Balfour.[6]
He is buried at theParish of the Ascension Burial Groundin Cambridge, with his wife and daughter, Phoebe Margaret De Gaudrion Verrall (1888-1890). His wife was a member of theLadies Dining Society.A portrait of Verrall byFrederic Yatesis in the collection ofTrinity College, Cambridge.[7]He was an uncle ofJoan Riviere,psychoanalyst et member of theBritish Psychoanalytic Society.[8]
References
edit- ^Richard Smail, ‘Verrall, Arthur Woollgar (1851–1912)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36646
- ^abChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1922)..Encyclopædia Britannica(12th ed.). London & New York: The Encyclopædia Britannica Company.
- ^"Verrall, Arthur Woollgar (VRL869AW)".A Cambridge Alumni Database.University of Cambridge.
- ^Shils, Edward; Blacker, Carmen (1996).Cambridge women: twelve portraits.Cambridge University Press.p. 30.ISBN0-521-48344-1.
- ^Rita McWilliams Tullberg, ‘Verrall, Margaret de Gaudrion (1857–1916)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2007.doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/48503
- ^Oppenheim, Janet (1988).The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914.Cambridge University Press. pp. 132–133.ISBN0-521-34767-X.
- ^"Trinity College, University of Cambridge".BBC Your Paintings. Archived fromthe originalon 19 November 2014.
- ^F. Robert Rodman, Winnicott, life and work, Da Capo Press, 2004.
External links
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