Thomas Arnold
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Thomas Arnold (June 13, 1795 – June 12, 1842) was a famous schoolmaster and historian, head of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841.
He was born on the Isle of Wight, the son of an inland revenue officer, and was educated at Winchester and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. There he excelled at Classics and was made a fellow of Oriel in 1815. His appointment to the headship of Rugby, a famous public school, after some years as a tutor, turned the school's fortunes around, as his learning, earnestness, and force of character enabled him not only to raise his own school to the front rank of public schools, but to exercise an unprecedented reforming influence on the whole educational system of the country; he is portrayed as a leading character in the novel, Tom Brown's Schooldays. A liberal in politics, and a zealous church reformer, he was involved in many controversies, educational and religious. As a churchman he was a decided Erastian, and strongly opposed to the High Church party. In 1841, he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He was one of the Eminent Victorians in Lytton Strachey's book of that name, and his Life was written in 1844 by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, who had been one of his pupils.
His chief literary works are his unfinished History of Rome (three volumes 1838-42), and his Lectures on Modern History. He died suddenly of angina pectoris in the midst of his usefulness and growing influence. His life, by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, is one of the best works of its class in the language.
Arnold's son was the poet, Matthew Arnold, and his granddaughter, Mary Augusta Arnold, became a famous novelist under her married name of Mrs Humphry Ward.