Oliver Elton

Oliver Elton (3 June 1861 – 4 June 1945) was an English literary scholar whose works include A Survey of English Literature (1730 - 1880) in six volumes, criticism, biography, and translations from several languages including Icelandic and Russian. He was King Alfred Professor of English at Liverpool University. He also helped set up the Department of English at the University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.

Born at Holt, Norfolk, on 3 June 1861, Elton was the only child of Sarah and the Reverend Charles Allen Elton (1820–1887), the headmaster of Gresham's School, where Oliver was taught by his father until he proceeded to Marlborough College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he was a scholar from 1880 to 1885. He graduated with a BA with first class honours in Literae Humaniores in 1884.

His friends at Oxford included Leonard Huxley, Michael Sadler and Dugald Sutherland MacColl, whose sister he later married.

Elton's first work was as a tutor and lecturer in London, while preparing school editions of Shakespeare and Milton. He translated Einar Hafliðason's Laurentius Saga as The Life of Laurence Bishop of Hólar in Iceland (Lárentíus Kálfsson) into English. In this he was encouraged by Frederick York Powell, whose biography Elton would later publish in 1906.

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