John Churton Collins

John Churton Collins
Born	(1848-03-26)26 March 1848 Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England
Died	15 September 1908(1908-09-15) (aged 60) Lowestoft, Suffolk, England
Alma mater	Balliol College

John Churton Collins (26 March 1848 – 15 September 1908) was a British literary critic.

Biography

Churton Collins was born at Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England. From King Edward's School, Birmingham, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1872, and at once devoted himself to a literary career, as journalist, essayist and lecturer. His first book was a study of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1874), and later he edited various classical English writers, and published volumes on Bolingbroke and Voltaire in England (1886),^[1] The Study of English Literature (1891),^[2] a study of Dean Swift (1893), Essays and Studies (1895),^[3] Ephemera Critica (1901), Essays in Poetry and Criticism (1905), and Rousseau and Voltaire (1908), his original essays being sharply controversial in tone, but full of knowledge.^[4]

In 1904 he became professor of English literature at Birmingham University.^[5] For many years he was a prominent University Extension lecturer, and a constant contributor to the principal reviews. On 15 September 1908 he was found dead in a ditch near Lowestoft, Suffolk, at which place he had been staying with a doctor for the benefit of his health. The circumstances necessitated the holding of an inquest, the verdict being that of accidental death.^[4]

Criticism

Lord Tennyson, a target of Collins' pen,^[6] referred to him as "a louse in the locks of literature".^[7]

Works

• Bolingbroke: A Historical Study (1886).
• Illustrations of Tennyson (1891).
• The Study of English Literature (1891).
• Essays and Studies (1895).
• A Treasury of Minor British Poetry (1896).
• The Early Poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1900).
• Ephemera Critica (1901).
• Jonathan Swift, a Biographical and Critical Study (1902).
• Critical Essays and Literary Fragments (1903).
• Studies in Shakespeare (1904).
• Studies in Poetry and Criticism (1905).
• 13 essays, most on 18th century poets, in Poets' Country, ed. Andrew Lang (1907).
• Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England (1908).^[8]
• Greek Influence on English Poetry (1910).
• Life and Memoirs of John Churton Collins (1911).
• The Posthumous Essays of John Churton Collins (1912).

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Collins, John Churton". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 692.

Further reading

• Kearney, Anthony (1981). "John Churton Collins and the Attempt to Link English and Classics". British Journal of Educational Studies. 29 (3): 258–267. doi:10.2307/3119935. JSTOR 3119935.
• Kearney, Anthony (1986). John Churton Collins: the Louse on the Locks of Literature. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press.
• Theobald, Robert M. (1904). The Ethics of Criticism, Illustrated by Mr. Churton Collins. London: Watts & Co.

External links

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