author
Richard Morris
1833–1894
A self-taught scholar and clergyman, he helped make Old and Middle English literature more accessible to readers and students in the nineteenth century. His editions and language studies played a lasting part in the early study of English philology.
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About the author
Born in Bermondsey in 1833, Richard Morris was an English philologist and a priest of the Church of England. Accounts of his life describe him as largely self-educated after training as an elementary schoolmaster, a background that makes his later scholarly influence especially striking.
Morris became known for editing and studying early English texts at a time when Old and Middle English were becoming more widely taught and researched. He also served as Winchester lecturer on English language and literature at King's College School, and later as headmaster of the Royal Masonic Institution for Boys.
Alongside his academic work, he was ordained in 1871. He died in 1894, but his name remains closely connected with the nineteenth-century revival of interest in early English language and literature.