Heathcote William Garrod

Heathcote William Garrod ( 21 January 1878 – 25 December 1960) was a British classical scholar and literary scholar.

Early life and education Garrod was born in Wells, Somerset, the fifth of six children of solicitor Charles William Garrod and his wife, Louisa (née Ashby).

Career In June 1902 he was appointed to an assistant tutorship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Although educated primarily in classics, Garrod became more interested in English literature. His 1923 work, Wordsworth: Lectures and Essays was well received and led to his position as Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1923 to 1928. In 1925, he resigned his tutorship in classics at Oxford for a research fellowship in English, which had been vacant after the death of W. P. Ker. From 1929 to 1930, Garrod was the Charles Eliot Norton professor at Harvard University.

Though the remark is frequently attributed to others more famous, more reliable sources give him as the person who, when accosted by a woman during the First World War asking why he was not with the soldiers fighting to defend civilization, replied: "Madam, I am the civilization they are fighting to defend."

Honours

In addition to the CBE, Garrod received honorary doctorates from the University of Durham (DLitt, 1930) and the University of Edinburgh (LLD, 1953). He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1931.

Garrod, who never married, died at the Acland Nursing Home in Oxford on Christmas Day 1960.

Works

Statii Thebais et Achilleis (Oxford, 1906) editor (second edition in 1926, reprinted in 1951) Opvs epistolarvm Des Erasmi Roterdami (1906) editor with H. M. Allen The Religion of All Good Men: And Other Studies in Christian Ethics (1906) Manili Astronomicon Liber II (1911) The Oxford Book of Latin Verse (1912) Oxford Poems (John Lane 1912) Einhard's Life of Charlemagne (1915) editor with R. B. Mowat Wordsworth: Lectures and Essays (1923) Byron 1824–1924 (1924) The Profession of Poetry, Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Poetry, University of Oxford, 13 February 1924 (1924) Coleridge Poetry and Prose with Essays By Hazlitt, Jeffrey, De Quincey, Carlyle & Others (1925) editor Keats (1926) Merton Muniments (1928) with P. S. Allen The Poetry of Collins (1928) Warton Lecture The Profession of Poetry and other lectures (1929) Poetry and the Criticism of Life (1931) Ancient Painted Glass in Merton College Oxford (1931) Tolstoi's Theory of Art (1935) Taylorian Lecture Opera Flacci, Q. Horati (1941) editor with Edward C. Wickham Epigrams (1946) List of the Writings of H. W. Garrod (1947) John Donne; Poetry and Prose with Izaac Walton's Life. Appreciations By Ben Jonson, Dryden, Coleridge and Others (1948) Genius Loci and other essays (1950) Poetical Works of John Keats (1956) Study of Good Letters (1963)