Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, the son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School. He studied at Balliol College, Oxford, published his first book of poems, The Strayed Reveller, in 1849, and spent thirty-five years as an inspector of schools, a post that made him a lasting advocate of state-regulated secondary education. Elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857, he was the first holder of the chair to lecture in English rather than Latin. He is often counted as the third great Victorian poet beside Tennyson and Browning, and his prose, including Culture and Anarchy, made him a sage writer who instructed readers on the social questions of his day.