Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

The son of Thomas Arnold (1795-1842) and Mary Penrose, Matthew Arnold was born into a prominent family. Thomas, known as Dr. Arnold, was a famous and much-loved educator and headmaster of Rugby School. Lytton Strachey in his Eminent Victorians (1918) considered Dr. Arnold to be a typical Victorian in his energy and determination, his earnestness, and his always having the best intentions. At Rugby, Dr. Arnold emphasized moral training by institutionalizing prefects (older boys) and sports. He was an imposing figure who demanded a great deal from his students and from his son.

At first, Arnold resisted his father’s influence by aspiring to dandyism and refusing to take academics seriously. After Dr. Arnold  died in 1842, when Arnold was only twenty, Arnold further separated himself from his father’s legacy by becoming a poet. In his poetry, Arnold worked through both private and public preoccupations, particularly with the desire for genuine communication and relationships, uncertainty over authentic identity, and despair in the face of a Crisis of Faith. In 1857, he became the Chair of Poetry at Oxford.

He ultimately moved away from his own poetry, which he saw as lacking in system and too emotional and subjective. He believed that, without a system, you needed to learn of and about other people and cultures.

As he reached middle age, Arnold turned exclusively to prose, particularly essays that offered curative methods for the ills of his society. He advocated for an educated public, well-versed in the classics, and open to culture. Relying on a free play of the mind, Arnold criticized Britain’s lack of perspective on itself, particularly its tendency to activity and work at the expense of intellectuality and rationality. A thorough knowledge of the best thinking and writing of the world would counteract such tendencies through touchstones that would offer objective means to measure progress. He defended great literature as a way to develop character and promoted culture as a positive force that could lead to true equality
for all parts of society, eradicating separate classes.

In 1883 and 1886, Arnold toured America and Canada, giving lectures on education. He died of heart failure in 1888.

Biographical Text is a derivative of  Bonnie J. Robinson, “Matthew Arnold,” British Literature II: Romantic Era to the Twentieth Century and Beyond (2018), English Open Textbooks 16,
https://oer.galileo.usg.edu/english-textbooks/16. Licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0.