Ernest de Selincourt Biography

British scholar and literary critic, born in Streatham, London, educated at University College, Oxford. He became Professor of English Language and Literature at Birmingham University in 1908 and was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1928 to 1933. At both universities he made an essential contribution to the emergence of English studies as an independent academic discipline. His first notable works of scholarship, The Poems of John Keats and Hyperion: A Facsimile of Keats's Autograph Manuscript, were published in 1905. He is best known for his editorial work on the writings of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, which includes editions of The Prelude (1926), The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth (4 volumes, 1935–9), The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth (2 volumes, 1940–4), and Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals (2 volumes, 1941). His biography of Dorothy Wordsworth appeared in 1933. Among his other publications are the collected essays of Wordsworthian and Other Studies (1947), and English Poets and the National Ideal, a series of lectures published in 1915.