Benjamin Jowett

Benjamin Jowett
Benjamin Jowett, 1893.
Born	(1817-04-15)15 April 1817 Camberwell, London
Died	1 October 1893(1893-10-01) (aged 76) Alton, Hampshire
Nationality	British
Occupation	Academic
Known for	being a teacher, theologian and translator of Plato and Thucydides
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Benjamin Jowett (/ˈdʒoʊɪt/, modern variant /ˈdʒaʊɪt/; 15 April 1817 – 1 October 1893) was renowned as an influential tutor and administrative reformer in the University of Oxford, a theologian and translator of Plato and Thucydides. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

Jowett was born in Peckham, Kent, and grew up in Camberwell, the third of nine children. His father was a furrier originally from a Yorkshire family that, for three generations, had been supporters of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England; and an author of a metrical translation of the Old Testament Psalms. His mother was a Langhorne, related to John Langhorne, the poet and translator of Plutarch. At twelve, Jowett was placed on the foundation of St Paul's School (then in St Paul's Churchyard) where he soon gained a reputation as a precocious classical scholar. Aged eighteen he was awarded an open scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he remained for the rest of his life. He went up in 1836, and was quickly recognized as one of the leading Oxford Dons of his generation, made a Fellow while still an undergraduate in 1838; he graduated with first-class honours in 1839. This was at the height of the Oxford Tractarian movement: through the friendship of W.G. Ward he was drawn for a time in the direction of High Anglicanism; but a stronger and more lasting influence was that of the Arnold school, represented by A.P. Stanley. The controversy caused Jowett to withdraw from High Table at college to lodgings in Broad Street.