Sir Edwin Arnold | |
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Born |
Gravesend, Gravesham, Kent, England |
10 June 1832
Died | 24 March 1904 London, England |
(aged 71)
Occupation | Journalist, editor, and poet |
Nationality | English |
Education | University College, Oxford |
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Sir Edwin Arnold KCIE CSI (10 June 1832 – 24 March 1904) was an English poet and journalist, who is most known for his work The Light of Asia.
Arnold was born at Gravesend, Kent, the second son of a Sussex magistrate, Robert Coles Arnold. One of his six children was the novelist Edwin Lester Arnold. He was educated at King's School, Rochester; King's College London; and University College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize for poetry in 1852. He became a schoolmaster, at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and in 1856 went to India as Principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona, a post which he held for seven years, which includes a period during the mutiny of 1857, when he was able to render services for which he was publicly thanked by Lord Elphinstone in the Bombay Council. Here he received the bias towards, and gathered material for, his future works.
Returning to England in 1861 he worked as a journalist on the staff of the Daily Telegraph, a newspaper with which he continued to be associated as editor for more than forty years, and of which he later became editor-in-chief. It was he who, on behalf of the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph in conjunction with the New York Herald, arranged the journey of H.M. Stanley to Africa to discover the course of the Congo River, and Stanley named after him a mountain to the north-east of Albert Edward Nyanza.