Dowden

Dowden, EDWARD, was born in Cork in 1843, and was educated at Queen's College there, and at Trinity College, Dublin, where his course was remarkably distinguished. In 1867 he took by competition the professorship of Oratory at Dublin University, which he exchanged soon after for that of English Literature. Dowden has contributed many able articles to the leading magazines, and has proved himself a profound Shakespearian, and a critic of uncommon insight and capacity, by his Shakspeare: A Study of his Mind and Art (1875), the invaluable Shakespear primer (1877), Studies in Literature: 1789-1877 (1878), Southey (1879), and Transcripts and Studies (1888). In 1876 he published poems, in 1881 an edition of Shakspeare's Sonnets and The Correspondence of Southey and Caroline Bowles, and in 1886 his authoritative Life of Shelley. His Transcripts and Studies appeared in 1888, New Studies in Literature in 1895, and History of French Literature in 1897. He contributed the articles on Goethe, Shakspeare, and Shelley to this Encyclopædia.