# List of writers associated with Balliol College, Oxford

This is a list of writers associated with Balliol College, Oxford.

## Authors
### Novelists, playwrights and screenwriters

| Name | Join Date | Theme | Comments | Refs |
| William Hurrell Mallock | 1869 | novel | Catholic writer who opposed socialism The new republic | $^{:62}$ |
| Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins | 1881 | adventure fiction | The Prisoner of Zenda | $^{:9}$ |
| Aldous Huxley | 1913 | dystopian fiction | author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962 | $^{:157}$ |
| L. P. Hartley | 1915 | family relationships | wrote of morality, society and the loss of innocence The Go-Between was made into a film. | $^{:178}$ |
| Beverley Nichols | 1916 | emotions | "Down the Garden Path" | $^{:200}$ |
| Nevil Shute | 1918 | dignity of work | His novels A Town Like Alice, Trustee from the Toolroom and On the Beach featured on the 1998 list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels of the 20th century | $^{:200}$ |
| Thomas Owen Beachcroft | 1921 | publicist, poet and writer | Chief Overseas Publicity Officer for the BBCA Young Man in a Hurry and Other Stories 1934 You Must Break Out Sometimes and Other Stories 1936The English Short Story 1964 |
| Graham Greene | 1922 | thriller | One of the leading novelists of the 20th century, shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Best known for his 'Catholic novels' exploring moral and political conflicts, especially the contest between the socialist state and private morality. Awarded OM. The Power and the Glory | $^{:5}$ |
| Anthony Powell | 1923 | book series | His famous series A Dance to the Music of Time (ranked 36th on the BBC list of 100 greatest British novels) earned him the title 'The English Proust'. | $^{:7}$ |
| Robertson Davies | 1935 | trilogy | One of Canada's best-known and most popular authors and one of its most distinguished "men of letters". His prize-winning novels and trilogies explore Jungian psychology, magic and classical myth.The Deptford Trilogy | $^{:50}$ |
| Dan Davin | 1936 | New Zealand | Rhodes Scholar, Fellow"Cliffs of Fall" | $^{:57}$ |
| W. J. Burley | 1950 | detective story | Wycliffe | $^{:159}$ |
| Kyril Bonfiglioli | 1955 | comedy thriller | Mortdecai | $^{:211}$ |
| Robert Barnard | 1956 | crime fiction | "Death of an Old Goat" | $^{:221}$ |
| Ian Watson | 1960 | science fiction | Warhammer 40,000 trilogy | $^{:282}$ |
| Martin Fido | 1963 | true crime | FellowTaught English at University of the West Indies and Boston University | |
| Martin Edwards | 1974 | crime novelist | Winner of the Diamond Dagger Lake District Mysteries "a crime writer's crime writer"winning Captain Christmas University Challenge | $^{:436}$ |
| Mick Herron | 1981 | espionage | Winner of the Gold Dagger Slough House novel series Slow Horses TV series | $^{:508}$ |
| Charlotte Jones | 1986 | playwright | The Halcyon WW2 period drama TV series | $^{:550}$ |
| Amit Chaudhuri | 1987 | creative writing | "A Strange and sublime address" | $^{:552}$ |
| Zia Haider Rahman | 1987 | trust | In the Light of What We Know | $^{:554}$ |
| Rana Dasgupta | 1990 | globalisation | Tokyo Cancelled | $^{:239}$$^{:562}$ |

### Biographers including auto-biographers

| Name | Join date | Theme | Comments | Refs |
| John Evelyn | 1637 | diarist | FRSdid not graduate | |
| John Gibson Lockhart | 1809 | novelistbiographer | wrote standard biography of Sir Walter Scott, his father-in-law | |
| John Addington Symonds | 1857 | biographer | wrote on Percy Bysshe Shelley, Michelangelo et al. | $^{:24}$ |
| Sir Sidney Lee | 1878 | man of letters | editor, Dictionary of National Biography | $^{:112}$ |
| John Stewart Collis | 1918 | biographer | biography of George Bernard ShawThe Worm Forgives the Plough about working the land in WWII | $^{:12}$ |
| Peter Quennell (left) | 1923 | historical writer | "the last genuine example of the English man of letters" | $^{:32}$ |
| Francis King | 1941 | novelist | Yesterday Came Suddenly, 1993 autobiography | $^{:91}$ |
| Nicholas Mosley | 1946 | novelist | peer, wrote critical biography of his father, the fascist Sir Oswald Mosley | $^{:122}$ |
| Warren Rovetch | 1949 | travel writer | Fulbright ScholarThe Creaky Traveler | $^{:154}$ |
| Ved Mehta | 1956 | author | Fellow, blindautobiographer in several books | $^{:227}$ |
| Howard Marks | 1964 | cannabis dealer | Served 7 years of a 25 year prison sentence in Terre Haute, Indiana after which he wrote the bestseller Mr Nice and became an activist for the legalisation of cannabis | $^{:326}$ |
| Johnny Acton | 1984 | ghostwriter | Farmer cookery writer | |

## Literary scholars

| Name | Join date | Field of work | Comments | Refs |
| Herbert Coleridge | 1847 | philologist | editor Oxford English Dictionary | $^{:5}$ |
| John Nichol | 1855 | literary critic | Regius Professor of English Literature, GlasgowByron, Burns, Carlyle | $^{:15}$ |
| John Churton Collins | 1867 | literary critic | Professor, BirminghamThe Study of English Literature "a louse in the locks of literature" (Tennyson) | $^{:52}$ |
| Henry Sweet | 1869 | phoneticist | A Handbook of Phonetics | $^{:63}$ |
| Henry Watson Fowler | 1880 | lexicographer | A Dictionary of Modern English UsageConcise Oxford English Dictionary"a lexicographical genius" (The Times) | $^{:7}$ |
| Logan Pearsall Smith second right | 1887 | essayist | Words and Idioms"The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of their blood." | $^{:21}$ |
| Cyril Connolly | 1922 | literary critic | Enemies of Promise | $^{:25}$ |
| John Livingston Lowes | 1930 | Samuel Taylor ColeridgeGeoffrey Chaucer | first Eastman Professortaught at Washington University St Louis, and Harvard | $^{:65}$ |
| David Daiches | 1934 | literary history | FellowA Critical History of English Literature The Penguin Companion to Literature | $^{:120}$ |
| George Steiner | 1950 | comparative literature | Rhodes Scholar, Hon. FellowProfessor at Geneva, Oxford, HarvardPolyglot and polymath | $^{:515}$ |
| John Minford | 1964 | sinologist | Translator of The Story of the Stone, The Art of War, the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching | $^{:377}$ |

### Poets

| Image | Name | Join date | Known as | Known for | Refs |
| | Sir Edward Dyer | (1561) | Courtier and Poet Chancellor of the Order of the GarterMP for Somerset 1589- | a candidate in the Shakespearean authorship question (Alden Brooks 1943) | |
| | Robert Southey | 1792 DNG | Romantic PoetPoet Laureate | Goldilocks and the Three BearsAfter Blenheim But what good came of it at last? Quoth little Peterkin. Why that I cannot tell," said he, But 'twas a famous victory. | |
| | Arthur Hugh Clough | 1836 | secretarial assistant to Florence Nightingale | his sister and daughter both became principals of Newnham College, CambridgeThe Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich | $^{:2}$ |
| | John Campbell Shairp | 1839 | pastoral poetProfessor of Humanity, St AndrewsOxford Professor of Poetry | "The Poetic Interpretation of Nature" 1877 | $^{:3}$ |
| | Matthew Arnold | 1840 | cultural critic sage writerOxford Professor of Poetryschool inspector | The Scholar GipsyDover Beach | $^{:3}$ |
| | Francis Turner Palgrave | 1842 | anthologistOxford Professor or Poetry | Golden Treasury | $^{:4}$ |
| | Charles Stuart Calverley (born Blayds) | 1849 (expelled 1850) | Fellow, Christ's Cambridgehumourist | "Ode to Tobacco" (1862) is on a bronze plaque in Cambridge market square | $^{:6}$ |
| | Algernon Charles Swinburne | 1855 (rusticated 1859) | poet-novelist-criticmasochist | nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1903 to 1909Poems and Ballads | $^{:18}$ |
| 100px]] | Gerard Manley Hopkins | 1863 | Jesuit priestprofessor of Classics UCD 1884sprung rhythm | though publishing little while alive, has experienced posthumous fame that placed him among leading English poets with his prosody establishing him as an innovator, as did his praise of God through vivid use of imagery and nature; by 1930 Hopkins's work was seen as one of the most original literary advances of his centuryThe Wreck of the Deutschland"the most original poet of the Victorian age" (Ricks 1991) | $^{:38}$ |
| | Andrew Lang | 1864 | FBA, polymathpoet, novelist, literary critic, anthropologist, folklorist | Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887) Lang's Fairy Books 1889 - | $^{:44}$ |
| | Robert Browning | 1867 | Poet and playwright | "the most considerable poet in English since the major Romantics" (Harold Bloom 2004), was a personal friend of the Master Benjamin Jowett and became the college's first Honorary Fellow, donating his portrait and other memorabilia to the college, which grew to become "one of the most distinguished collections of Browning material" | |
| | Andrew Cecil Bradley | 1869 | Shakespeare scholarOxford Professor of Poetry | "Shakespearean Tragedy" 1904, probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost Sat for a civil service post. The English paper for that year Had several questions on King Lear Which Shakespeare answered very badly Because he hadn’t read his Bradley. | $^{:60}$ |
| | William Money Hardinge | 1872 | The 'Balliol Bugger' | gay literature"Clifford Gray: A Romance of Modern Life" 1881 | $^{:76}$ |
| | Henry Charles Beeching | 1878 | Professor of Pastoral Theology KCL 1900-03Dean of Norwich | "A paradise of English Poetry" 1893"The Masque of B-ll—l" 1880 First come I; my name is Jowett. There's no knowledge but I know it. I am master of this college: What I don't know isn't knowledge. | |
| | Count Eric Stenbock | 1879 DNG | Baltic Swedish poet writing in English | Macabre fiction and poetry"The Song of the Unwept Tear" covered by Marc Almond in Feasting with PanthersStudies of death : romantic tales 1894 | |
| | Hilaire Belloc | 1892 | Liberal MP for Salford South 1906-10Catholic literary revival | "Cautionary Tales for Children" The nicest child I ever knew Was Charles Augustus Fortescue. He never lost his cap, or tore His stockings or his pinafore: Balliol made me, Balliol fed me, Whatever I had she gave me again; And the best of Balliol loved and led me, God be with you, Balliol men | $^{:35}$ |
| | Walter Lyon | 1905 | WW1 war poet | "Easter at Ypres""I Tracked a Dead Man Down a Trench" | $^{:104}$ |
| | Julian Grenfell | 1906 | WW1 war poetBiography 1976 by Nicholas Mosley (Balliol 1946) | DSO"Into Battle" 1915 The thundering line of battle stands, And in the air Death moans and sings; But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, And Night shall fold him in soft wings. | $^{:111}$ |
| | Patrick Shaw-Stewart | 1906 | WW1 war poet | "Achilles in the Trench" I saw a man this morning Who did not wish to die; I ask, and cannot answer, if otherwise wish I. | $^{:115}$ |
| | Joseph Macleod | 1926 | British poet, actor, playwrighttheatre director, theatre historian and BBC newsreader | One of the earliest interpreters of Chekhov in the UK, whom Basil Bunting claimed was the most important living British poet, while also gaining admiration from Ezra Pound Riddle-me-ree 1971 "I was afraid and they gave me guts. I was alone and they made me love. Round that wild heat they built a furnace and in the torment smelted me. Out of my fragments came design: I was assembled. I moved, I worked, I grew receptive. Thanks to them I have fashioned me. Who am I?" | $^{:26}$ |
| | Sir Laurence Whistler | 1930 | poet and glass engraver | President of the British Guild of Glass EngraversKing's Gold Medal for Poetry | $^{:72}$ |
| | F. T. Prince | 1931 | WW2 poet | One of the best-known poems of the Second World War"Soldiers Bathing" | $^{:79}$ |
| | Sir Christopher Ricks | 1953 | FBA literary criticProfessor of the Humanities at Boston University. Formerly Professor at Cambridge | practical criticism "exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding" W H Auden | $^{:272}$ |
| | Gwyneth Lewis | 1985 | National Poet of WalesArtist in Residence, Balliol College | Honorary Fellow, Harkness Fellow wrote the bilingual six-foot-high words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre | |