Tom Arnold (literary scholar)
| Thomas ("Tom") Arnold | |
|---|---|
| Born |
30 November 1823 Staines, Surrey, England |
| Died | 12 November 1900 (aged 76) Dublin, Ireland |
| Occupation | school inspector, teacher, writer, academic |
| Nationality | British |
| Period | Victorian |
| Genre | non-fiction |
| Subject | History of literature |
| Spouse | Julia Sorell (1826–1888); Josephine Benison |
| Children | nine children, of whom five lived to adulthood |
| Relatives | Thomas Arnold (father), Matthew Arnold (brother), Mary Augusta Ward (daughter), Julian Huxley (grandson), Aldous Huxley (grandson) |
Tom Arnold (30 November 1823 – 12 November 1900), also known as Thomas Arnold the Younger, was an English literary scholar.
He was the second son of Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby School, and younger brother of the poet Matthew Arnold. After gaining a first class degree at University College, Oxford, Arnold grew discontented with Victorian Britain and attempted to take up farming in New Zealand. Failing to make a success of this career, in 1850 he moved to Tasmania, having been invited to take the job of Inspector of Schools by Governor William Denison. Soon after arriving in Hobart, he fell in love with and married Julia Sorell, granddaughter of former Governor William Sorell. They had nine children (four of whom died young), among them: Mary, who became a novelist under the name Mrs Humphry Ward; Julia, who married Leonard Huxley, the son of Thomas, and gave birth to Julian and Aldous; and William Thomas the journalist. After being widowed in 1888, Arnold in 1890 married for a second time, to Josephine Benison, daughter of James Benison, Ballyconnell, County Cavan, Ireland.
While in Tasmania Arnold converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, a move which angered his Protestant wife sufficiently to cause her to smash the windows of the chapel during his confirmation. The marriage was to be plagued by domestic strife over religious loyalty until Julia's death. At the time Tasmania would not employ Catholics in senior civil service positions, and so in 1857 the family moved back to England. Arnold took a job teaching English literature at the Catholic University in Dublin, and wrote A Manual of English Literature (1862), which became a standard textbook. He resigned from the university in 1862 to become head of classics at The Oratory School in Birmingham. He left in 1865, when a letter he had written insisting that he would need a higher salary to continue at the school was interpreted by Cardinal Newman as a tendering of resignation.
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