author
Herbert W. (Herbert Woodfield) Paul
1853–1935
A sharp-tongued English man of letters, he moved easily between politics and literary life, serving as a Liberal MP while building a reputation as an essayist, historian, and biographer. His work is especially remembered for its clear style and for studies of major Victorian figures such as Gladstone and Matthew Arnold.
1 Audiobook
The Life of Froude
by Herbert W. (Herbert Woodfield) Paul
About the author
Born in 1853, Herbert Woodfield Paul was educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he became president of the Oxford Union. He later trained in law and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, but writing and public life became the center of his career.
Paul worked as a leader-writer for the Daily News and entered Parliament as the Liberal member for Edinburgh South, serving in the 1890s. Alongside politics, he wrote widely as an essayist, historian, and biographer, bringing a crisp, readable style to literary and political subjects.
He is particularly associated with books on figures including William Ewart Gladstone and Matthew Arnold. That mix of political experience and literary judgment gives his writing an informed, conversational quality that still makes it approachable today.