F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry) Myers

Born in Keswick, England, on February 6, 1843, Frederic William Henry Myers was educated at Cheltenham and Trinity College, Cambridge. He built an early reputation as a classicist, essayist, and poet, and he also taught at Cambridge, where he became part of a highly intellectual literary world.

Over time, his interests widened beyond literature into psychology and psychical research. Myers was one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882, and much of his later career was devoted to investigating dreams, telepathy, hypnotism, and survival after death. That unusual mix of scholarly seriousness and spiritual curiosity made him a distinctive figure in late Victorian culture.

He died in Rome on January 17, 1901. Myers remains notable not only for his poems and essays, but also for the influence of his ideas about the "subliminal self," which helped shape later discussions of the unconscious and the hidden depths of human experience.