Senior, NASSAU WILLIAM

Senior, NASSAU WILLIAM, political economist and ‘prince of interviewers,’ was born on 26th September 1790, at Compton in Berkshire, the eldest son of the vicar of Durnford, Wilts, and from Eton passed to Magdalen College, Oxford, where in 1812 he took a distinguished first-class in classics. In 1819 he was called to the bar at Lincoln’s Inn; during 1825–30, and again during 1847–62, was professor of Political Economy at Oxford; in 1832 was appointed a Poor-law commissioner; and from 1836 to 1853 was a Master in Chancery. He travelled much, and wrote much for the Edinburgh Review and other leading periodicals, his twenty works including, besides treatises on political economy, Biographical Sketches (1863); Essays on Fiction (1864); Historical and Philosophical Essays (1865); Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland (1868); Journals kept in France (1871); Conversations with Distinguished Persons during the Second Empire (4 vols. 1878–80); and Conversations and Journals in Egypt and Malta (1882). He died 4th June 1864.