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1866 - 1946
Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Glasgow
William
Macneile Dixon was a poet, historian, and scholar
of the English language. His writings, both popular and academic, were
renowned in the first half of the twentieth century. Dixon
studied in Dublin and was awarded his Litt.D.
at the University
of Glasgow where he was
Professor of English Language and Literature.
Dixon was in love with his
country and its language. From his collections of poems to his book The
Englishman, we find a scholar and a poet whose patriotism inspired a
generation. His expertise also included Hellenism, Classical Philosophy, and
neo-Platonism. Dixon
was a true Renaissance thinker who believed that a civilization was more
indebted to the genius of its ‘intuitive’ individuals—its artists and
writers—than to its politicians, engineers, scientists or leaders.
Originally Dixon was not scheduled to deliver the
1935–1937 Glasgow Gifford Lectures. But Emil Meyerson,
who had been selected to follow after William Temple, died before he could
deliver any of his courses, and Dixon
stepped into the breach with little time to prepare. Nevertheless Dixon’s two courses of
Glasgow Gifford Lectures were well received and immediately published upon
their completion in 1937. By 1944 The Human Situation had been printed
in seven editions. The popularity of Dixon’s
work in the first half of the twentieth century makes unfathomable the
relative obscurity of his work (outside of his poetry) in the second half of
the century.
Representative works include English
Poetry from Blake to Browning (1894), A Primer of Tennyson, With a
Critical Essay (1896), In the Republic of Letters (1898), Poetry
and National Character (1915), The Fleets Behind the Fleet: The Work
of the Merchant Seamen and Fishermen in the War (1917), The British
Navy at War (1917), Tragedy (1924), Cinderella's Garden
(1927), The Human Situation (1937), Thoughts for the Times
(1941) and An Apology for the Arts (1944).
Michael W.
DeLashmutt
University of Glasgow
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