A. C. Bradley (Andrew Cecil Bradley) Biography

British critic, born in Cheltenham, the brother of F. H. Bradley; he was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where he lectured from 1876 to 1882, when he accepted a professorship at Liverpool University. In 1901 he became Oxford Professor of Poetry, producing his most notable work during the five years of the appointment. The essays of Shakespearean Tragedy (1904) established him as the leading Shakespearian critic of his day and offer what L. C. Knights termed ‘the most illustrious example’ of the ‘discussion of Shakespeare's tragedies in terms of the characters of which they are composed’; Knights and others associated with Scrutiny dismissed his methods as sentimentally speculative. His Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909) were dominated by further examples of his work on Shakespeare, which remains notable for his magisterial style and the acuteness of many of his insights. Other publications by Bradley include Miscellany (1929), a collection of essays; and Ideals of Religion (1940), which originated in his work as Gifford Lecturer at the University of Glasgow in 1907 and 1908.