C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Critical and Biographical Introduction

By Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903)

“AMONG the influences that have formed my life,” says Dean Farrar, “I must mention the character of my mother. She had no memorial in this world; she passed her life in the deep valley of poverty, obscurity, and trial, but she has left to her only surviving son the recollections of a saint. As a boy I was not sent to our great English public schools, but to one which is comparatively unknown, although several men were trained there who are now playing a considerable part in the world. That school was King William’s College, at Castleton on the Isle of Man. I have sketched the natural surroundings of the school, and many little incidents of its daily life, in the first book I wrote—‘Eric, or Little by Little,’”—now in its twenty-sixth edition. “Accident,” he continues, “made me an author. The proposal to write a book on school life came unsought, and I naturally found in my own reminiscences the colors in which I had to work.”

Born in Bombay in 1831, Farrar took numerous prizes and honors during his school life at King’s College, and at nineteen was made classical exhibitioner of the London University, where he was graduated. In 1854 he took his bachelor’s degree at Trinity College, Cambridge, was ordained deacon, and in 1857 was admitted to priest’s orders. For several years he was an assistant master at Harrow; in 1871 became head-master of Marlborough College, where he remained till April 1876, when he was appointed canon in Westminster Abbey and rector of St. Margaret’s. While at Harrow he was made chaplain to the Queen, and in 1883 Archdeacon of Westminster. He is at present Dean of Canterbury.

His literary fecundity was extraordinary. Besides his ‘Life of Christ,’ which gave him an almost worldwide fame; his ‘Life and Work of St. Paul’ and his ‘Beginnings of Christianity,’ each of which represents much labor, he has written a course of Hulsean Lectures on the ‘Witness of History to Christ’; a bulky volume on ‘Eschatology’; three linguistic works, ‘The Origin of Language,’ ‘Chapters on Language,’ and ‘Families of Speech’; two popular romances, ‘Darkness and Dawn’ and ‘Gathering Clouds’; and many volumes of sermons and theological papers. He died in London, March 22, 1903.

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