Biography
He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, and later returned to teach classics at Winchester in the 1870s, 80s and 90s. There, he gained the nickname "Mush" (his classroom hence inevitably becoming the "Mushroom"). Morshead was famed for his personal idiolect, eccentric even by the standards of Victorian schoolmasters, known as "Mushri". His pupils compiled and privately published a "Mushri-English pronouncing dictionary", which proved popular enough to run to seven editions. It now forms a valuable source for research into upper-class slang in Victorian England.
Morshead has been described by the academic Christopher Stray as a "Liberal among Tories", an eccentric and an individualist. Notably for a classicist in the late 19th century, he spoke out against the view, held by some of his colleagues, of science as "the enemy", and considered some defences of his discipline as bigoted, ill-informed assaults upon it. Stray emphasises his contribution to personal idiosyncrasy in the increasingly homogenous age of the Industrial Revolution, and draws parallels between Morshead's teaching and that of teachers in the Greek and Roman era.
Read more about this topic: E. D. A. Morshead
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every mans life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (174095)
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)