Biography
Toynbee was born in London, the son of the physician Joseph Toynbee, a pioneering otolaryngologist.
Arnold Toynbee was the uncle, via his brother Harry Valpy Toynbee, of universal historian Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975); with whom he is often confused.
Toynbee attended public schools in Blackheath and Woolwich. In 1873 he began to study political economy at Oxford University, first at Pembroke College and from 1875 at Balliol College, where he went on to teach after his graduation in 1878. His lectures on the history of the Industrial Revolution in 18th and 19th century Britain proved widely influential; in fact, Toynbee coined, or at least effectively popularised, the term "Industrial Revolution" in the Anglophone world—in Germany and elsewhere it had been brought into circulation earlier by Friedrich Engels, also under the impression of the industrial changes in Britain.
He married Charlotte Atwood, 12 years his senior and a cousin of Harold F. Davidson, the famous rector of Stiffkey.
Toynbee died in 1883, at age 30. His health had rapidly deteriorated, probably due to exhaustion by excessive work.
Read more about this topic: Arnold Toynbee
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