[John Wesley]. British man of letters, born at Ashby de la Zouch, Leicestershire, on the 5th of October 1836 and was educated at Louth grammar school, Glasgow high school, Durham grammar school, Glasgow University and Christ’s College, Cambridge, which elected him to a fellowship. He was for some time an assistant master at Marlborough College under Dr. Bradley, as well as examiner at King’s College, London, and the universities of Wales, New Zealand and Cambridge, and from 1889–93 Clark lecturer on English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. Until 1903, when he retired, he was professor of English literature at King’s College, London. He was general editor of Bell’s Handbooks of English Literature, as well as editor of handbooks on The Longer English Poems (1872) and Milton’s Areopagitica (1874), and co-editor of Percy’s Folio MS. (1867–68). He wrote the introduction to Snell’s Age of Chaucer and Seccombe and Allen’s Age of Shakespeare, and contributed to the Dictionary of National Biography. He died in London on the 19th of May 1914. (See authored article: Robin Hood.)
