William Aldis Wright: Trinity College, Cambridge University

A writer and editor, and a man of letters like me, William Aldis Wright presented immediate problems with general disagreement on the year of his birth with 1831 and 1836 also proffered. He was principally an editor, so with a shout out for our own wonderful editor at the Suffolk magazine, I offer you Mr. Wright as a true Suffolk great.

Born in Beccles, William was the son of George Wright, a Baptist minister, and was educated at Beccles Grammar School. Positioned on the Waveney, with a busy and attractive staithe (quay), Beccles has much history which surely the academic-to-be would have appreciated.

St Michael's bell tower, Beccles. the town where Wright was born. Photo: Getty He left Beccles to head up to Trinity, Cambridge, graduating as a B.A. in 1858. He’s been described as a ‘vigorous scholar’, which seems worth celebrating in a time when scholarship seems to have become unfashionable.

Wright was an editor of the Journal of Philology from its foundation in 1868, and also acted as secretary to the Old Testament Revision Company (1870-85). Shakespeare was in his sights too, and between 1868 and 1897 he was editing the Bard’s plays in the Clarendon Press series as well as working on the Cambridge Shakespeare (1863-66 and the 1891-93 second edition) and the Globe edition (1864) in conjunction with William George Clark (1821-78), the County Durham-born classical and Shakespearean academic who was a Trinity tutor.

They were an interesting pairing, Clark the refined one who could perchance charm the birds from the trees, and Wright the reclusive, secluded and largely unknown one who did his stuff in dusty corners away from the spotlight and prying eyes. He was also noted for his Bible Word-Book (1866).

We’ve kind of summed him up: he was a Shakespearean and biblical scholar. He was also a philologist, someone who enjoys delving into the history of languages, particularly through studying literature. He would have been interested in the derivation of his own rather unusual middle name, Aldis. It comes from Italian and denotes ‘old one or elder,’ which fits with Wright who sounds like he came across as being an old soul.

Trinity College, Cambridge, where Wright held various positions. Photo: Getty Wright became librarian of Trinity, but until 1878, his nonconformist religion prevented him being elected a fellow, but in that year that particular wrong was righted. Then from 1888 he served as vice-master of Trinity. He’s recognised as one of the outstanding figures of the university, a great advocate and defender of its library, a man who was largely able to dodge university politics and managed to totally avoid any teaching and lecturing. It sounds to me like he was on to a good thing.

He did have a certain visibility though as college librarian, and it was in that capacity that most Trinity bods encountered him. It was when approached for assistance in the library that Wright’s dichotomy revealed itself: the lengths he would go to to help (‘zeal in labour and promptness of help’) contrasting starkly with ‘how strict a reserve and brevity in manner and accost’.

He could never have been the life and soul of any party. However, you feel that he might inadvertently have brought the house down with a pithy one-liner, delivered at the appropriate moment with suitable deadpan gravitas and possibly some unexpectedly fine comic timing. There is no doubt that Wright’s personality, or lack of, was legendary around Trinity, and any kind of contact with him an experience one was unlikely to forget, that personality described aptly I feel as an ‘institution’.

William edited the medieval verse romance Generydes (1878), Robert of Gloucester’s 13th century chronicle (1887), which sheds light on the 2nd Barons’ War during Henry III’s reign, Edward Fitzgerald’s Letters etc, as well as works by 17th century poet/intellectual John Milton, publishing a version with critical notes in 1903.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Wright's friend Edward Fitzgerald. Photo: Houghton Library, Harvard University/Wikimedia Wright was a close friend of Fitzgerald (1809-83), another Suffolk-born scholar, wordsmith, poet and writer and was also his literary executor so managed his works after his demise. Wright was responsible for five separate volumes of Fitzgerald’s letters and miscellaneous works between 1889 and 1903, and he also wrote his life (1904). His final published work came in 1911. Some sources say that the following year he resigned from the vice-mastership of Trinity, although Trinity’s own website states it was a position he continued to hold until his death.

Wright was also a benefactor to the British Museum, donating a significant collection of topographical engravings by his uncle, Thomas Higham, in 1902 and 1907. Higham (1795-1844) had been born in Bramfield, Suffolk.

We are also lucky to have a veritable treasure trove of Wright’s personal letters, including correspondence with the likes of successful merchant and Coleridge biographer James Dykes Campbell (1838-95), poet and critic Sir Edmund Gosse (1845-1928), who was a man after Wright’s own heart being an assistant librarian at the British Museum then librarian to the House of Lords. Also, fellow biblical scholar Sir George Grove (1820-1900), bibliographer, writer and editor William Carew Hazlitt (1834-1913), grandson of the famed essayist William Hazlitt, fellow Shakespearean scholar and antiquary James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps (1820-89) and the Macmillans – as in the publishers. It was a voluminous correspondence with a coterie of like-minded people.

William Aldis Wright died on May 19, 1914, aged 75 and was laid to rest in Cambridge. He’s hopefully keeping everything in order in some heavenly library.

CHRONOLOGY

1838 – William Aldis Wright born in Beccles.

1858 – Graduates as a B.A. from Trinity, Cambridge.

1866 – Publication of his Bible Word-Book.

1868 – Begins editing the Clarendon Press series of Shakespeares.

1878 – Elected a fellow of Trinity, an honour previously denied him.

1888 – Serves as vice-master of Trinity until his death.

1904 – Publishes a life of Edward Fitzgerald; Wright was his literary executor.

1911 – Publication of William Aldis Wright’s final work.

1914 – Death of William Aldis Wright (May 19) aged 75.