James Anthony Froude (1818–94)

Historian and writer. Disciple of Thomas Carlyle; published History of England (1856–70), The English in Ireland in the eighteenth century (1872–4), and The English in the West Indies (1888). Editor of Fraser’s Magazine, 1860–74. Visited Cape Colony and the Orange Free State in 1875, on behalf of the Tory government, to promote south African federation, but became critical of the plan to annex the Transvaal. Appointed, with Thomas Henry Huxley, as a member of the Scottish universities commission, 1876. Author of a controversial biography of Carlyle (1882–4). Regius professor of modern history, Oxford University, 1892–4.