W.P. Ker

William Paton Ker (1855-1923). Portrait by Johnstone Forbes-Robertson (1853-1947), 1880s. Courtesy Wikipedia.

William Paton Ker (30 August 1855 - 17 July 1923) was a Scottish academic and essayist.

Life

Ker was born in Glasgow in 1855. He studied at Glasgow Academy, the University of Glasgow and Balliol College, Oxford.

He was appointed to a fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford in 1879. He became Professor of English Literature and History at the University College of South Wales, Cardiff in 1883; and moved to University College London as Quain Professor in 1889. He was the Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1920 to his death while hill-climbing in Europe.

Writing

W.H. Auden's discovery of Ker was a turning point for him:

"... what good angel lured me into Blackwell's one afternoon and, from such a wilderness of volumes, picked out for me the essays of W.P. Ker? No other critic whom I have subsequently read could have granted me the same vision of a kind of literary All Souls Night in which the dead, the living and the unborn writers of every age and tongue were seen as engaged upon a common, noble and civilizing task. No other could have so instantaneously aroused in me a fascination with prosody, which I have never lost."

Recognition

A W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture is held at Glasgow University in his honour.

He is referred to repeatedly in J.R.R. Tolkien's essay Beowulf: The monsters and the critics.

Publications

Non-fiction

• Epic and Romance: Essays on medieval literature. London & New York: Macmillan, 1897; New York: Dover, 1957.
• The Dark Ages. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1904; New York: Scribner, 1904; New York: New American Library, 1958.
• On the Danish Ballads. Glasgow: 1904; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for Scottish Historical Review Trust, 1904.
• Essays on Medieval Literature. London & New York: Macmillan, 1905.
• Sturla the Historian. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1906.
• Tennyson: The Leslie Stephen lecture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1909.
• On the Philosophy of History: An address. Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1909.
• Romance. Oxford, UK: H. Hart for Oxford University Press, 1909.
• On the History of the Ballads, 1100-1500. London: Henry Frowde for Oxford University Press, 1910.
• Thomas Warton. Henry Frowde for Oxford University Press & the British Academy, 1910.
• English Literature; Medieval. London: Williams & Norgate, 1911; New York: Holt, 1912
  • also published as Medieval English Literature. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1912, 1969. ISBN 978-0-19-888043-1
• Jacob Grimm: An address. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1915.
• The Eighteenth Century. [Oxford?], UK: Oxford University Press, 1916.
• Two Essays: Don Quixote / The politics of Burns. Glasgow: Maclehose, 1918.
• Sir Walter Scott: A lecture at the Sorbonne. Glasgow: Maclehose, Jackson, 1919.
• The Art of Poetry: Inaugural lecture. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1920.
• Sir Walter Scott's Scotland. London: National Home Reading Union, 1922.
• The Art of Poetry: Seven lectures, 1920-1922. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1923.
• Collected Essays (edited by Charles Whibley). London: Macmillan, 1925; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1967; New York: Russell & Russell, 1968.
• Form And Style In Poetry: Lectures and notes (edited by R.W. Chambers). London: Macmillan, 1928; New York: Russell & Russell, 1968.
• On Modern Literature: Lectures and addresses (edited by Clarence Spencer). Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1955.

Edited

• Samuel Henry Jeyes, "Fugitive Writings", in Sidney Low, Samuel Henry Jeyes: A sketch of his personality and work. London: Duckworth, 1915.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of literary critics

Preceded by T. Herbert Warren

Oxford Professor of Poetry 1920-1923

Succeeded by Heathcote Willliam Garrod

References

• http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/William_Paton_Ker

External links

Books

• Works by W.P. Ker at Project Gutenberg
• W.P. Ker at the Online Books Page