Adolphus William Ward

Sir Adolphus William Ward (2 December 1837 - 19 June 1924) was an English historian and literary critic.

Life
Ward was born at Hampstead, London, and was educated in Germany and at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

In 1866 Ward was appointed professor of history and English literature in Owens College, Manchester, and was principal from 1890 to 1897, when he retired. He took an active part in the foundation of Victoria University, of which he was vice-chancellor from 1886 to 1890 and from 1894 to 1896, and he was a founder of Withington Girls' School in 1890. He was a Member of the Chetham Society, serving as a Member of Council from 1884 and as President from 1901 until 1915. In 1897, the freedom of the city of Manchester was conferred upon him, he delivered the Ford Lectures at Oxford University in 1898, and on 29 October 1900 he was elected master of Peterhouse, Cambridge.

Ward served as president of the Royal Historical Society from 1899 to 1901, and he was knighted by the King in 1913.

Writing
Ward's most important work is his standard History of English Dramatic Literature to the Age of Queen Anne, 1875, re-published after a thorough revision in 3 volumes in 1899. He also wrote The House of Austria in the Thirty Years' War, 1869; Great Britain and Hanover: Some aspects of the Personal Union, 1899; and The Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian Succession, 1903 (2nd ed. 1909).

Ward edited George Crabbe's Poems (2 vols., 1905–1906) and Alexander Pope's Poetical Works (1869); he wrote the volumes on Geoffrey Chaucer and Charles Dickens in the "English Men of Letters" series, translated Ernst Curtius's History of Greece (5 vols., 1868–1873); with G. W. Prothero and Stanley Mordaunt Leathes he edited the Cambridge Modern History between 1901 and 1912, and with A.R. Waller edited the Cambridge History of English and American Literature (1907, etc.).