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Frederick York Powell

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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FREDERICK YORK POWELL (1850-1904), English historian and scholar; was born in Bloomsbury, London, on the 14th of January 1850. Much of his childhood was spent in France and Spain, so that he early acquired a mastery of the language of both countries and an insight into the genius of the people. He was educated at Rugby School, and matriculated at Oxford as an unattached student, subsequently joining Christ Church, where he took a first-class in law and modern history in 1872. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1874, and married in the same year. He became law-lecturer and tutor of Christ Church, fellow of Oriel College, delegate of the Clarendon Press, and in 1894 he was made regius professor of modern history in succession to J. A. Froude. Although he never made any extensive contribution to history, he was a particularly stimulating teacher. He had been attracted in his school days to the study of Scandinavian history and literature, and he was closely allied with Professor Gudbrandr Vigfusson (d.1889), whom he assisted in his Icelandic Prose Reader (1897), Corpus poeticum boreale (1887), Origines islandicae (1905), and in the editing of the Grimm Centenary papers (1886). He took a keen interest. in the development of modern French poetry, and Verlaine, Mallarme and Verhaeren all lectured at Oxford under his auspices. He was also a connoisseur in Japanese art. In politics his sympathies were with the oppressed of all nationalities; he had befriended refugees after the Commune, counting among his friends Jules Vanes 1 the author of Les Refractaires; and he was also a friend of Stepniak and his circle. He died at Oxford on the 8th of May 1904.

See the Life, with letters and selections, by Oliver Elton (1906).