Thring, EDWARD, a great educationist, was born at Alford Rectory in Somersetshire, November 29, 1821, and had his education at Eton and King's College, Cambridge, of which he was elected fellow. He took orders, and served in curacies at Gloucester and elsewhere, but in September 1853 found the work of his life in the appointment to be head-master of Uppingham school. He found it insignificant, but made it one of the healthiest and best equipped among the public schools of England. He finally limited the number of boys to 330, thirty to each boarding-house, and he gave himself for thirty-four years with restless energy to the task of educating these in the highest sense of the word. No man ever estimated more highly the worth of life: no schoolmaster since Arnold has been more successful in imprinting upon the characters of his pupils a high ideal of duty as the great end of life. The manly fibre of his own nature, his earnestness and honesty, his firm discipline, and his stern denunciation of cowardice and wrong gave a distinctive character to the school. He died October 22, 1887. His works include volumes of school songs and lyrics, an English grammar, a Latin gradual and a construing book; Thoughts on Life Science, anonymously (1869), The Theory and Practice of Teaching (1883), Uppingham Sermons (2 vols. 1886), Addresses (1887), Poems and Translations (1887), and Uppingham School Songs and Borth Lyrics (1887)—Borth was the Cardiganshire village to which the school removed on the outbreak of scarlet fever in 1874.
See J. H. Skrine, A Memory of Edward Thring (1889); H. D. Rawnsley, Edward Thring (1889); the Biography by Principal Parkin appeared in 1898.