John Robert Seeley

Sir John Robert Seeley, KCMG (10 September 1834 – 13 January 1895) was an English Liberal historian and political essayist. A founder of British imperial history, he was a prominent advocate for the British Empire, promoting a concept of Greater Britain. This he expounded in his most widely known book The Expansion of England (1883). While he was an early advocate of the establishment of political science as a distinct academic discipline, he retained a theological approach in which this was embedded. Early life Seeley was born in London. His father was Robert Benton Seeley, a publisher who issued books under the name of Seeley, Jackson and Halliday, was a strong advocate of Evangelical Anglicanism, and was the author of several religious books and of The Life and Times of Edward I. His mother was Mary Ann Jackson (1809–1868), who shared her husband's religious views. Her brother, John Henry Jackson, was a partner in Robert Seeley's publishing company. John was related to the chemist Arthur Herbert Church, a cousin through his mother. John was educated at City of London School, where he enjoyed history, theology and literature. While there, he wrote two essays comparing Shakespeare and classical Greek drama in 1850 and 1851, the latter of which won him a Beaufoy Prize, now held by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. He went on to Christ's College, Cambridge, at which he was head of the Classical tripos and senior Chancellor's medallist. His education at Cambridge was interrupted by illness and he only completed his exams in 1858. During his time at Christ's he became friends with Charles Stuart Calverley, John Wesley Hales, Walter Besant, Walter Skeat and Walter Sendall. He was elected a fellow of Christ's and subsequently became a classical studies tutor at the college. He published an anonymous book of poetry and then went through a personal crisis during which abandoned many of the conventional beliefs of his youth and sought to replace them with more well-founded and secure beliefs. He left Cambridge in 1860.