Life of Dr Arnold. Stanley. Volumes I & II.

Tan leather binding. Red and green title plates. Gilt rugby school emblem on front board and dedication on back board with edge decoration. Gilt lettering and decoration on the spine. Very nicely bound

Life of Doctor Arnold (1844) authored by Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Thomas Arnold (13 June 1795 – 12 June 1842) was an English educator and historian. He was an early supporter of the Broad-Church Anglican movement. As headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841, he introduced several reforms that were widely copied by other noted public schools. His reforms redefined standards of masculinity and achievement. The Life of Doctor Arnold, published two years after his death by one of Arnold's former pupils, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, is seen as one of the best works of its class in the language and added to his growing reputation. A popular life of Arnold by the novelist Emma Jane Guyton also appeared. In 1896 his bust was unveiled in Westminster Abbey alongside that of his son, Matthew. The Times asserted, "As much as any who could be named, Arnold helped to form the standard of manly worth by which Englishmen judge and submit to be judged." However, his reputation suffered as one of the Eminent Victorians in Lytton Strachey's book of that title published in 1918. A more recent public-school headmaster, Michael McCrum of Tonbridge School and Eton College in the 1960s to 1980s, also a churchman and Oxbridge academic (Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Vice-Chancellor), wrote a biography and reappraisal of Arnold in 1991. He had briefly been a master at Rugby and was married to the daughter of another former headmaster. More recently, a biography entitled Black Tom was written by Terence Copley. Both McCrum and Copley seek to restore some lustre to the Arnold legacy, which had been under attack since Strachey's sardonic appraisal.

1. C. Benson once observed of Arnold, "A man who could burst into tears at his own dinner-table on hearing a comparison made between St. Paul and St. John to the detriment of the latter, and beg that the subject might never be mentioned again in his presence, could never have been an easycompanion."

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, FRS (13 December 1815 – 18 July 1881), known as Dean Stanley, was an English Anglican priest and ecclesiastical historian. He was Dean of Westminster from 1864 to 1881. His position was that of a Broad Churchman and he was the author of a number of works on Church History. He was a co-founder of the Palestine Exploration Fund. He was educated at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold, and in 1834 went up to Balliol College, Oxford. He is generally considered to be the source for the character of George Arthur in Thomas Hughes's well-known book Tom Brown's Schooldays which is based on Rugby. After winning the Ireland scholarship and Newdigate prize for an English poem (The Gypsies), he was in 1839 elected a Fellow of University College, and in the same year took holy orders. In 1840 he travelled in Greece and Italy, and on his return settled at Oxford, where for ten years he was tutor of his college and an influential element in university life. His relationship with his pupils was close and affectionate, and the charm of his character won him friends on all sides. His literary reputation was early established by his Life of Arnold, published in 1844. In 1845 he was appointed select preacher and published in 1847 a volume of Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, which not only laid the foundation of his fame as a preacher, but also marked his future position as a theologian. In university politics, which at that time wore mainly the form of theological controversy, he was a strong advocate of comprehension and toleration.