Tom Arnold (academic)
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Tom Arnold also known as Thomas Arnold the Younger (1823 – 1900) was a British literary professor.
He was the second son of the Rugby School headmaster Thomas Arnold and his elder brother was the poet Matthew Arnold. After taking a first at Oxford University, Arnold grew discontented with Victorian Britain and took up farming in New Zealand. Failing to take to this career, Arnold moved to Tasmania, having been invited to take the job of Inspector of Schools by Governor William Denison. Whilst in Hobart, Tasmania, he fell in love with and married a former Governor's daughter, Julia Sorell, and they had two daughters. Mary would later be a novelist whilst their other daughter, also called Julia, married Leonard Huxley, the son of Thomas Huxley, and she became mother to Julian and Aldous Huxley. His second marriage was to Josephine Benison.
While in Tasmania Arnold converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, a move which angered his Protestant wife sufficiently to cause her to smash the windows of the chapel during his confirmation. At the time, the Tasmania would not employ Catholics in senior civil service positions, and so in 1857 the family moved back to England. Arnold took a job teaching at the Oratory School in Birmingham, but after seven years he left, after arguing with Cardinal Newman over his choice of an unorthodox theology book which Arnold gave as a prize to his students.
For a time Arnold returned to the Church of England, and lectured at Oxford, but on the eve of being appointed Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, he converted back to Catholicism and was required to leave the post. After a period of financial hardship, Arnold moved to Dublin to teach at the Catholic University.
Author of A Manual of English Literature and other works.
[edit] References
- Bergonzi, Bernard (2003) A Victorian Wanderer The Life of Thomas Arnold the Younger ISBN 0-19-925741-8 OUP link
- Huxley, Julian (1970) Memories. London: George Allen and Unwin.
