Lord David Cecil | |
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| Born | Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil (1902-04-09)9 April 1902 Hatfield House,Hertfordshire, England |
| Died | 1 January 1986(1986-01-01) (aged 83) |
| Nationality | English |
| Education | Eton College |
| Alma mater | Christ Church, Oxford |
| Occupations | |
| Employers | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 3, includingJonathan |
| Parents |
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Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil,CH (9 April 1902 – 1 January 1986) was a British biographer, historian, and scholar. He held the style of "Lord" bycourtesy as a younger son of a marquess.
David Cecil was the youngest of the four children ofJames Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury, and the former Lady Cicely Gore (second daughter ofArthur Gore, 5th Earl of Arran). His siblings wereLady Beatrice Edith Mildred Cecil (afterwards Baroness Harlech),Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 5th Marquess of Salisbury (1893–1972) and Lady Mary Alice Cecil (afterwardsMary Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire). Cecil was a delicate child, suffering from a tubercular gland in his neck at the age of 8 years, and after an operation he spent a great deal of time in bed, where he developed his love of reading.
Because of his delicate health his parents sent him toEton College later than other boys, and he survived the experience by spending one day a week in bed. After school he went on toChrist Church, Oxford, as an undergraduate.
Cecil read Modern History at Oxford and in 1924 obtained first-class honours. From 1924 to 1930 he was a Fellow ofWadham College, Oxford. With his first publication,The Stricken Deer (1929), a sympathetic study of the poetCowper, he made an immediate impact as a literary historian. Studies followed onWalter Scott, early Victorian novelists andJane Austen.
In 1939 he became aFellow ofNew College, Oxford, where he remained a Fellow until 1969, when he became an Honorary Fellow.[1]
In 1947 he became Professor ofRhetoric atGresham College, London, for a year; but in 1948 he returned to theUniversity of Oxford and remained a Professor of English Literature there until 1970. For a time Cecil was an associate of the literary group known as the "Inklings", which included notable authors such asJ.R.R. Tolkien,C.S. Lewis, andOwen Barfield. While a professor at New College Cecil's pupils includedKingsley Amis,Bidhu Bhusan Das,R. K. Sinha,John Bayley, theMilton scholar Dennis Burden, andLudovic Kennedy. Neil Powell describes Amis's relationship with him, or lack of a relationship, as follows:
[Amis's] allocated supervisor was Lord David Cecil, who seemed disinclined to supervise anything at all; after a term and a half had passed without any contact between them, Kingsley decided to go in search of him at New College. This caused much amusement at the porters' lodge, as if he had asked for the Shah of Persia: "Oh no, sir. Lord David? Oh, you'd have to get up very early in the morning to get hold of him. Oh dear, oh dear. Lord David in college, well I never did."
A 1949 lecture by Cecil is credited with inspiringL. P. Hartley's famous line "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." (The Go-Between, 1953). Cecil's words were:
Past periods are like foreign countries: regions inhabited by men of like passions to our own, but with different customs and codes of behaviour.[2][3]
During his academic career Cecil published studies ofHardy,Shakespeare,Thomas Gray,Dorothy Osborne andWalter Pater. As well as his literary studies he also published a two-volume historical biography ofLord Melbourne (to whom he was distantly related) and appreciations of visual artists –Augustus John,Max Beerbohm,Samuel Palmer andEdward Burne-Jones. In retirement he published further literary and biographic studies ofWalter de la Mare, Jane Austen,Charles Lamb andDesmond MacCarthy, as well as a history of his own family,The Cecils of Hatfield House and an account ofSome Dorset Country Houses. His anthology of writers who had given him special pleasure,Library Looking Glass, appeared in 1975.
In 1932 Cecil married Rachel MacCarthy, daughter of the literary journalistSir Desmond MacCarthy. They had three children, including actorJonathan Cecil.
