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

John Churton Collins
Born(1848-03-26)26 March 1848
Died15 September 1908(1908-09-15) (aged 60)
Lowestoft, Suffolk, England
Alma materBalliol College

Biography

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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

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

Works

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References

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  1. ^ Courtney, W. P. (10 July 1886). "Review of Bolingbroke, a Historical Study; and Voltaire in England by John Churton Collins". The Academy. 30 (740): 19.
  2. ^ Ryland, F. (12 December 1891). "Review of The Study of English Literature by John Churton Collins". The Academy. 40 (1023): 529–530.
  3. ^ Walker, Hugh (23 November 1895). "Review of Essays and Studies by John Churton Collins". The Academy. 48 (1229): 427–428.
  4. ^ a b Chisholm 1911.
  5. ^ "COLLINS, John Churton". Who's Who. Vol. 59. 1907. p. 365.
  6. ^ Kearney, Anthony (1992). "Making Tennyson a Classic: Churton Collins' 'Illustrations of Tennyson' in Context". Victorian Poetry. 30 (1): 75–82.
  7. ^ Berlin, Isaiah (12 April 1987). "Edmund Wilson Among the 'Despicable English'". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 June 2012.
  8. ^ Buckingham, James Silk; Sterling, John; Maurice, Frederick Denison; Stebbing, Henry; Dilke, Charles Wentworth; Hervey, Thomas Kibble; Dixon, William Hepworth; MacColl, Norman; Rendall, Vernon Horace; Murry, John Middleton (18 April 1908). "Review: Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau in England by J. Churton Collins". The Athenaeum. No. 4199. p. 471.

Further reading

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