John Churton Collins.

Epithet: literary critic

British Library Archives and Manuscripts Catalogue : Person : Description : ark:/81055/vdc_100000001296.0x0002a1

John Churton Collins (1848-1908) author and professor of English was educated at the Grammar School of King Edward the Sixth (Birmingham, England), and Balliol College, Oxford where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1872. Collins was greatly interested in literature in his youth; he coached London candidates for civil service examinations from 1873, and wrote for the press and magazines; made friends with Swinburn, edited Cyril Tourneur's works, 1878; and Lord Herbert of Cherbury's poems, 1881. He was a contributor to the Quarterly Review from October 1878, and many of his articles there were republished independently. Collins was a successful lecturer for Oxford and London university extension from 1880. He long agitated with good ultimate effect for academic recognition of English literature at Oxford; urged his views in The Study of English Literature, 1891 and in periodicals, an outspoken critic of current literature in Saturday Review, 1894-1906; collected essays in Ephemera Critica, 1901, Studies in Shakespeare, 1904, Studies in Poetry and Criticism, 1905, and Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Rousseau in England, 1905. Collins was professor of English at University of Birmingham, 1904-1908. He received an honorary Litt.D. from Durham University in 1905; was a zealous amateur student of criminology;, and a brilliant conversationalist. He drowned at Oulton Broad near Lowestoft, Suffolk.

Reference: The Concise Dictionary of National Biography Part 2, 1901-1950 (Oxford, 1967).

For further reading about the University of Birmingham see: Eric Ives, Diane Drummond, Leonard Schwarz The First Civic University: Birmingham 1880-1980 An Introductory History (The University of University of Birmingham Press. 2000).

From the guide to the University of Birmingham Staff Papers: Papers of John Churton Collins, 1904-1908, (University of Birmingham Information Services, Special Collections Department)