William Henry Stevenson

William Henry Stevenson (7 September 1858 – 22 October 1924), who wrote as W. H. Stevenson, was an English historian and philologist who specialized in Anglo-Saxon England. Stevenson was born in Nottingham and went to school in Hull. As a young man he was a researcher for the Nottingham Borough Council and became a contributor to the English Historical Review. Having worked for many years on early charters, in May 1898 Stephenson delivered the Sandars Lectures at Cambridge on the subject of 'The Anglo-Saxon Chancery'. A pioneer of Anglo-Saxon studies, Stevenson's magnum opus was his edition of Asser's Life of King Alfred, published in 1904, and in the sixteen years between 1892 and 1908 he edited for the Public Record Office eleven volumes of calendars of Close Rolls. A fellow and librarian of St John's College, Oxford, from 1904 until his death, he was the mentor of Frank Stenton.