Edward A. (Edward Augustus) Freeman

Born in 1823, Edward Augustus Freeman was an English historian, writer, and public intellectual whose work ranged across English, European, and comparative history. He studied at Trinity College, Oxford, and became especially well known for The History of the Norman Conquest of England, the large, influential project most closely associated with his name.

Freeman wrote with enormous energy and confidence, producing books, essays, travel writing, and journalism as well as formal history. He took a strong interest in politics, institutions, and the way nations and empires developed over time, and his historical writing often connected the medieval world to the public debates of his own century.

Later in life he served as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He died in 1892 in Alicante, Spain, leaving behind a body of work that made him one of the best-known British historians of the Victorian era.