Charles Edwyn Vaughan

Charles Edwyn Vaughan (10 February 1854 – 8 October 1922) was a British academic who specialised in English literature and political philosophy.

Early life and academic career

Vaughan was born in Leicester and educated at Marlborough College. He matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford on 31 May 1873, and graduated with a BA in 1878 and an MA in 1883. Vaughan was one of the many students at Balliol who came under the influence of the idealist philosopher T. H. Green, who was also his cousin.

Vaughan served as Professor of English Language and Literature at three different institutions: University College, Cardiff between 1889 and 1898, the Durham College of Science from 1889 to 1904 and at the University of Leeds from 1904 until 1913. He then moved to Manchester and was appointed Governor of John Rylands Library.

Vaughan's magnum opus was the Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which he composed between the 1890s and 1915, when it was published in two volumes by Cambridge University Press. Harold Laski considered Vaughan as "much the best of his [Rousseau] editors" and said that he was "an ardent devotee" of Rousseau.