Dasent, SIR GEORGE WEBBE

Dasent, SIR GEORGE WEBBE, was born in 1820 at St Vincent in the West Indies, of which island his father was attorney-general. He was educated at Westminster School and King's College, London; graduated B.A. at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1840; and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1852, in which year also he received his degree of D.C.L. He was for twenty-five years (1845-70) an assistant-editor of the Times, and married a sister of its editor, Mr Delane. An accomplished linguist, especially in Scandinavian, he acted as examiner in English and modern languages for the Civil Service; he was a Civil Service Commissioner in 1872-92, was knighted in 1876, and died 11th June 1896. In 1842 he published a translation of The Prose or Younger Edda; which was followed by an essay, 'The Norsemen,' in the Oxford Essays (1858); Popular Tales from the Norse, with an Introductory Essay on the Origin and Diffusion of Popular Tales (1859), and Tales from the Fjeld (1874), both from the Norwegian of Asbjørnsen; translations from the Icelandic of Saga of Burnt Njal (1861), and the Story of Gísli, the Outlaw (1866); and an Introduction and Life of Cleasby, prefixed to Vigfusson's completion of Cleasby's unfinished Icelandic-English Dictionary (1874). Sir George Dasent also wrote several fair novels. His famous introduction to Asbjørnsen's Popular Tales was a solid contribution to folklore, being an admirable exposition of the Aryan theory of story-transmission as advocated by Grimm and Max Müller.