Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh (5 September 1861 – 13 May 1922) was an English scholar, poet, and author.
Biography
Walter Alexander Raleigh was born in London, the fifth child and only son of Alexander Raleigh, a Congregationalist minister, and Mary (née Gifford). Katherine Raleigh was a sister and Lord Gifford was an uncle. Raleigh was educated at the City of London School, Edinburgh Academy, University College London, and King's College, Cambridge. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles and President of the Cambridge Union in 1884.
He was Professor of English Literature at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh in India (1885–87), Professor of Modern Literature at the University College Liverpool (1890–1900), Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at Glasgow University (1900–1904), and in 1904 became the first holder of the Chair of English Literature at Oxford University and he was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford (1914–22). Raleigh was knighted in 1911. Among his works are Style (1897), Milton (1900) and Shakespeare (1907), but in his day he was more renowned as a stimulating if informal lecturer than as a critic.
On the outbreak of World War I, he turned to the war as his primary subject. Raleigh's correspondence during the war revealed strong Anti-German sentiment; one letter stated "German University Culture is mere evil", and added that the deaths "of 100 Boche professors... would be a benefit to the human race". His finest book may be the first volume of The War in the Air (1922), whose volumes II to VI (1928–1937, plus 3 volumes of maps) had to be compiled by Henry Albert Jones after Raleigh's death.
