Wilfrid Ward

Wilfrid Philip Ward (2 January 1856 – 9 April 1916) was an English essayist and biographer. Ward and his friend Baron Friedrich von Hügel have been described as "the two leading lay English Catholic thinkers of their generation".

Life

Wilfrid Ward was born in 1856 at Old Hall, Ware, Hertfordshire, one of nine children of Catholic converts William George Ward and his wife Frances Wingfield Ward.

He first went to Downside School, then St. Edmund's College in Ware, Hertfordshire. He obtained a B.A. degree from London University and later attended Catholic University College, Kensington. In 1877, Ward went to the English College, Rome to prepare for the priesthood and returned a year later to continue his studies at Ushaw College, in Durham, England. In 1881, shortly before his planned ordination, Ward reconsidered, and joined the Inner Temple to take up a career in law. Subsequently discouraged, he then became a writer. Ward's particular interests were apologetics and theology. In 1885 Ward became a lecturer on philosophy at Ushaw.

In 1887 he married Josephine Mary Hope-Scott. Josephine Ward was a novelist who mainly published as Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. The couple initially lived at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, then briefly at Hampstead, and then at Eastbourne in East Sussex, before settling in 1901 at Dorking in Surrey. They had five children. The eldest, Mary Josephine "Maisie" married Frank Sheed and together founded the publishing house Sheed and Ward.

Biographer

In 1889, Ward published a biography of his father, William George Ward and the Oxford Movement. This proving successful, he then wrote William George Ward and the Catholic Revival,. Cardinal Herbert Vaughan then invited Ward to write a biography of the late Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman. This was followed in 1912 by a two-volume biography of John Henry Newman.