George Walter Prothero

Sir George Walter Prothero, KBE (14 October 1848–10 July 1922) was an English writer and historian, and President of the Royal Historical Society.

Prothero was born in Wiltshire, and was educated at Eton, studying Classics at King's College at Cambridge University, and at the University of Bonn.^[1] He went on to become a Fellow of King's College, working as a history lecturer there from 1876. In 1894, he became the first Professor of Modern History at the University of Edinburgh. He held this position for five years before moving to London to take the place of his brother, Lord Ernle, as the editor of the Quarterly Review, a political periodical. He also acted as editor of the Cambridge Historical Series, a set of historical journals detailing the history of several European nations. In 1903, he was invited to give the Rede Lecture, where he spoke on the topic of Napoleon III and the Second French Empire. From 1904 to 1906, he was a member of the Royal Commission for Ecclesiastical Discipline. Following the outbreak of World War I, Prothero worked as Historical Advisor to the Foreign Office, and in this capacity attended the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. For his services to the war effort, he was created Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1920. He died in 1922.

Selected publications

• Life and Times of Simon de Montfort (1877)
• Memoir of Henry Bradshaw (1889)
• Select Statutes and other Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I (1894)
• The British History Reader (1898)
• Cambridge Modern History (1902–1912), co-editor

References

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Prothero, Sir George Walter (1848–1922), historian by Algernon Cecil, rev. Peter R. H. Slee.

Notes

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.