Thomas Tout

Thomas Frederick Tout
Born	28 September 1855 London, England
Died	23 October 1929 London, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Historian
Title	Professor of History
Spouse(s)	Mary Johnstone

Thomas Frederick Tout FBA (28 September 1855 – 23 October 1929) was a 19th- and 20th-century British historian of the medieval period.

Born in London, he was a pupil of St Olave's Grammar School, still then at Southwark, a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, and a fellow of Pembroke, but failing to obtain permanent fellowships at All Souls (1879) and Lincoln, his first academic post was at St David's University College, Lampeter (now the University of Wales, Lampeter), where his job title was 'Professor of English and Modern Languages'.

While at Lampeter, Tout commenced his prolific production of articles for the Dictionary of National Biography, including the entry on Rowland Williams. His descendants have said that this famous outpouring of influential biographical ur-essays was due to no more than the sheer poverty of a young married academic needing cash for words. It seems that the historical importance of the priceless Lampeter Tract Collection, held in that institution's Founders' Library, was not fully recognised at Lampeter until T. F. Tout arrived at the college. With his friend, C. H. Firth, who was an external examiner for St David's for a number of years, Tout rescued the collection from neglect, arranging for seventy-two volumes to be rebound, rearranging the contents of some, and bringing together, for example, all the Civil War and Commonwealth newspapers scattered throughout the collection, into four volumes arranged in chronological order. Tout was the most distinguished member of the Lampeter staff at this time, and was soon styled Professor of History.

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