Author: Alford, Henry
Biography:
ALFORD, Henry (1810-71: ODNB)
He was born on 7 Oct. 1810 at 25 Alfred Place, Bedford Square, London, the son of the Rev. Henry Alford (1782-1852), an evangelical, and his first wife Sarah Eliza Paget (d 1810), who died in childbirth. He was educated at Ilminster Grammar school and entered Trinity College Cambridge in 1829 (BA 1832, MA 1835, BD 1850, DD 1859). At college he formed lasting friendships with Alfred Tennyson, Arthur Hallam, and Christopher Wordsworth (qq.v.). In Oct. 1834 he was elected Fellow of Trinity and in Mar. 1835 was given the living of Wymeswold (or Wimeswould), Leicestershire, by the college, a living he held for eighteen years. He married his cousin Frances (Fanny) Oke Alford (1810/11-78) on 10 Mar. 1835 at Curry Rivel, Somerset, with his father officiating. They went on to have four children. Two sons died in childhood. In 1853 they moved to London where he became minister of Quebec Chapel, Portman Square, Marylebone. In 1857 he was appointed dean of Canterbury and held this office until his death. He died at the deanery, Canterbury, on 12 Jan. 1871, leaving an estate of £25,000. Like many Victorian intellectuals, he gravitated between Hebraism and Hellenism, spontaneity of consciousness and strictness of conscience, producing an edition of the Greek New Testament (1849-61) which, in large part, introduced German textual scholarship into England, and a translation of The Odyssey (1861) in blank verse. Also noteworthy is his edition of The Works of John Donne (1839) and a lecture, English Descriptive Poetry (1856). He collected his poems in Poetical Works (1845) and there is much valuable material on contemporaries in his Life, Journal and Letters, ed. Fanny Alford (1873). (ODNB 12 Apr. 2021; Life, Journal and Letters [1873]; A Memorial of the Rev. Henry Alford [1855]; Saint James’s Chronicle 12 Mar. 1835) AA