Benjamin Thorpe

Benjamin Thorpe (1782 – 19 July 1870) was an English scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature.

Biography In the early 1820s he worked as a banker in the House of Rothschild, in Paris. There he met Thomas Hodgkin, who treated him for tuberculosis.

After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, Thorpe returned to England in 1830. In a few years he established a reputation as an Anglo-Saxon scholar.

In recognition of unremunerative work, Thorpe was granted a civil list pension of £160 in 1835, and on 17 June 1841 this was increased to £200 per annum. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Munich, and of the Society of Netherlandish Literature at Leyden He died at Chiswick in July 1870.