Basil Willey, (25 July 1897 – 3 September 1978) was British scholar of

English literature English literature is literature written in the English language from United Kingdom, its crown dependencies, the Republic of Ireland, the United States, and the countries of the former British Empire. ''The Encyclopaedia Britannica'' defines E ...

and

intellectual history Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual hist ...

. Having served in the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

during the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

, he rose to become

King Edward VII Professor of English Literature The King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature is one of the senior professorships in literature at the University of Cambridge, and was founded by a donation from Sir Harold Harmsworth in 1910 in memory of King Edward VII who had died ear ...

at the University of Cambridge from 1946 and President of Pembroke College from 1958 to until his retirement in 1964.

Biography

He was born in London in 1897 and educated at

University College School ("Slowly but surely") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Mark Beard , r_head_label = , r_he ...

, Hampstead, and

Peterhouse, Cambridge Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite ...

, where he won a scholarship in 1915; conscripted into the

West Yorkshire Regiment ) , march = ''Ça Ira'' , battles = Namur FontenoyFalkirk Culloden Brandywine , anniversaries = Imphal (22 June) The West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's Own) (14th Foot) wa ...

soon after, he eventually graduated in 1921 with a first-class degree in History and English. He became a fellow of Pembroke College in 1935. He was appointed

in 1946. He served as President of Pembroke College from 1958 to 1964. He retired from his position as King Edward VII Professor of English Literature in 1965. He was a

Fellow of the British Academy Fellowship of the British Academy (FBA) is an award granted by the British Academy to leading academics for their distinction in the humanities and social sciences. The categories are: # Fellows – scholars resident in the United Kingdom # ...

(FBA) and a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

(FRSL). He was a member of the Athenaeum Club in London.

Published works

* ''Tendencies in Renaissance Literary Theory'' (1922) * ''The Seventeenth Century Background : Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion'' (1934) * ''The Eighteenth Century Background : Studies on the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period'' (1940) * ''Nineteenth Century Studies : Coleridge to Matthew Arnold'' (1949) * ''Christianity Past and Present'' (1952) * ''More nineteenth century studies: A group of honest doubters'' (1956) * ''The Religion of Nature'' (1957) * ''Darwin and Butler: Two Versions of Evolution: The Hibbert Lectures of 1959'' (1960) * ''The English Moralists'' (1964) * ''Cambridge and other Memories, 1920-1953'' (1968 - Published by Chatto and Windus,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

) * ''Religion to-day'' (1969) * ''Samuel Taylor Coleridge'' (1973)

Additional bibliography

* ''The English Mind: Studies in the English Moralists'' – Presented to Basil Willey by Hugh Sykes Davies and George Watson (1964) * ''Spots of Time: A Retrospect of the Years 1897-1920'' (First volume of autobiography) detail taken from ''Cambridge and other Memories'' by Chatto and Windus

1968.

Footnotes

References

* ''Contemporary Authors Online'', Gale, 2007. Reproduced in ''Biography Resource Center''. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. {{DEFAULTSORT:Willey, Basil Academics of the University of Cambridge Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge English literary critics 1897 births 1978 deaths Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Fellows of the British Academy Fellows of Pembroke College, Cambridge 20th-century English historians Writers from London Place of death missing British Army personnel of World War I West Yorkshire Regiment soldiers King Edward VII Professors of English Literature