Robert Howard Hodgkin

Robert Howard "Robin" Hodgkin[1] (24 April 1877 – 28 June 1951) was an English historian of modern history at Queen's College at the University of Oxford, who served as its provost from 1937 until 1946. In 1900, he was named a Lecturer of modern history at the college, and from 1928 to 1934 was a University Lecturer in that subject. His seminal work, A History of the Anglo-Saxons, was published in 1935, and in his retirement he published Six Centuries of an Oxford College: A History of the Queen's College, 1340–1940.

Robert Howard Hodgkin
Hodgkin in 1945
Born
Robert Howard Hodgkin

(1877-04-24)24 April 1877
Newcastle-on-Tyne, England
Died28 June 1951(1951-06-28) (aged 74)
NationalityEnglish
OccupationHistorian
Years active1900–1949
Notable work
A History of the Anglo-Saxons (1935); Six Centuries of an Oxford College (1949)

Hodgkin was part of a line of historians; his father, Thomas Hodgkin, was a recognised historian of Europe in the Middle Ages in addition to a banker, while his son, Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, was a Marxist historian of Africa.[2][3][4] Robert Hodgkin was also part of a so-called "Quaker dynasty", with many notable and accomplished relatives.[5] He was forced to leave the Quakers over his military service in the Second Boer War, when he volunteered to serve in the Northumberland Fusiliers.[2]

Early life and education
See also: Hodgkin family

Robert Howard Hodgkin, known as Robin,[1] was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne on 24 April 1877.[2][3] His mother was Lucy Hodgkin,[6] and his father Thomas Hodgkin, a banker and historian of Europe in the Middle Ages.[2][3] Robert Hodgkin was educated at Repton, Leighton Park School, and Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where in 1899 he obtained first-class honours in the Final School of Modern History.[2][3]

Part of a Quaker family, Hodgkin nevertheless supported the Second Boer War, joining the 1st V.B. Northumberland Fusiliers.[2] In 1900, he wrote to the Quaker magazine The Friend, claiming many members of the movement—known as the Society of Friends—shared his views but hid behind the Quakers' pacifist stance, "bringing on the Society the shadow of hypocrisy".[7] His father also supported the war, rankling other Quakers, and causing John Wilhelm Rowntree to write to Rufus Jones in indignation, claiming that "[y]ou would hardly believe your eyes if you came over here. Thos. Hodgkin's son a Lieutenant, though still a nominal Quaker, heads a procession to burn Kruger in effigy, T. Hodgkin makes the speech and Lily [Lucy?] Hodgkin lights the faggots ... the spirit of war, stalks the land naked, unashamed & our leading Quaker gives his benediction!"[8] Not all agreed; Caroline Stephen wrote to Robert Hodgkin's mother that there was "much of nobleness ... much that appeals to all one's best feelings" in what he had done.[6] Hodgkin was ultimately forced to leave the Society of Friends due to his military service in the Second Boer War.[2] Later, during World War I, he would return to the regiment as a captain in the Seventh Battalion, in addition to serving in the General Staff for Operations in the War Office.[2]

Career

After his graduation, Hodgkin was appointed Lecturer in modern history in 1900 at Queen's College, Oxford, and later, from 1928 to 1934, was a University Lecturer in the subject.[2][3][4] From 1904 until 1937 he served there as a Fellow, and from 1910 to 1937 as a Tutor.[2][3] In October 1937, following the death of the provost, B. H. Streeter, in a plane crash the month before,[9] Hodgkin was unexpectedly asked to take on the role, and accepted; his recently purchased retirement home became a weekend retreat instead.[10] During his tenure the college celebrated the six-hundredth anniversary of its founding.[2][3] Hodgkin retired in 1946, and was named an Honorary Fellow.[3]

Hodgkin was particularly known for two major works: A History of the Anglo-Saxons, which was first published in 1935, and Six Centuries of an Oxford College: A History of the Queen's College, 1340–1940, which was published in 1949 while Hodgkin was in retirement.[2][3][4][11]

A History of the Anglo-Saxons

A History of the Anglo-Saxons was first published in 1935.[12] The two-volume work traced the Anglo-Saxons from their first mentions to the death of Alfred the Great in 899.[13] Noting Hodgkin's father, Charles Wendell David wrote that "[b]eing of the present generation, [Robert Hodgkin's] work necessarily rests more largely on the researches of specialists and is correspondingly more solidly based, but it still has the sweep and roominess and charm with which the elder Hodgkin has made his readers familiar."[14] Reviewers praised Hodgkin's use of archaeological and philological developments, as well as studies of aerial photography and toponymy.[14][15][13][16] Though it was intended for the more general reader,[17] Francis Peabody Magoun wrote that it "becomes overnight the first history to put in the hands of the serious beginning student of any aspect of English life before the death of Alfred".[13] Kemp Malone claimed that Hodgkin "writes a somewhat pedestrian but a readable prose", but in the next breath added "[a]ll in all, his is by far the best general work that we have on the earliest centuries of English culture."[18] According to another reviewer, "Hodgkin deals fearlessly—it might be said ruthlessly—with much of the interpretation of historians treating of this period, who wrote so late as two generations ago."[19]

A second edition, predominantly a corrected version of the first,[20] followed in 1939.[21] Reginald Ralph Darlington wrote that "the appearance of a second edition within four years bears witness to its wide appeal".[22] A year after Hodgkin's 1951 death, a third edition was published.[23] It was little changed, except for a 48-page appendix on the Sutton Hoo ship-burial authored by Rupert Bruce-Mitford, the assistant keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities of the British Museum.[20] The appendix, Magoun wrote, "is in effect a second interim report which summarizes material scattered through the literature of the intervening years" since Bruce-Mitford's 1946 publication of a report on the find.[20]

Personal life

According to a friend of a relative, "[t]he Hodgkins are a Quaker dynasty with all that that implies".[5] Hodgkin's wife was Dorothy Forster Hodgkin, the daughter of Arthur Smith, a teacher at Balliol with whom Hodgkin had lodged before starting university.[10] Robert and Dorothy Hodgkin had a son, Thomas Lionel Hodgkin, later a Marxist historian of Africa; in 1937, he married Dorothy Crowfoot, who under her married name would win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.[1] Among others, Robert Howard Hodgkin was also related to the painter Sir Howard Hodgkin, the namesake of Hodgkin's lymphoma Thomas Hodgkin, and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.[5]

Hodgkin and his wife purchased an Illington home, Crab Mill, to retire to.[1] It eventually became used as a family retreat, and was taken over in turn as a retirement home by his son and daughter-in-law.[1] Robert Hodgkin died on 28 June 1951, at the age of 74, at his home in Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire;[3] his wife died in 1974.[1]

Publications
  • Hodgkin, Robert Howard (1935). A History of the Anglo-Saxons (1st ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Hodgkin, Robert Howard (1939). A History of the Anglo-Saxons (2nd ed.). London: Oxford University Press.
  • Hodgkin, Robert Howard (1952). A History of the Anglo-Saxons (3rd ed.). London: Oxford University Press.
  • Hodgkin, Robert Howard (1949). Six Centuries of an Oxford College: A History of the Queen's College, 1340–1940. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

References
  1. "Catalogue of the additional papers of Dorothy Mary Crowfoot Hodgkin, 1919–2003". Bodleian Library. University of Oxford. 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
  2. "Mr. R. H. Hodgkin". Nature. Nature Publishing Group. CXL (3546): 676. 16 October 1937. doi:10.1038/140676a0.
  3. "Mr Robert H. Hodgkin". Obituary. The Guardian (32, 665). Manchester. 30 June 1951. p. 3 – via Newspapers.com.
  4. "Robert Howard Hodgkin (1877–1951), Provost (1937–1946)". Art UK. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
  5. Paul, Richard (11 October 1984). "Shining Light". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C.
  6. Kennedy 2001, p. 258 n.82.
  7. Kennedy 2001, pp. 257–258.
  8. Kennedy 2001, p. 258.
  9. "Dr. B. H. Streeter: A Modernist Theologian with a Wide Influence". The Guardian (28, 389). Manchester. 13 September 1951. pp. 9–10 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. Ferry 2014.
  11. Hodgkin 1949.
  12. Hodgkin 1935.
  13. Magoun 1937, p. 510.
  14. David 1936, p. 99.
  15. van Bath 1949, p. 319.
  16. Radford 1936, p. 129.
  17. Whiting 1937, p. 122.
  18. Malone 1937, p. 57.
  19. Nielson 1943, p. 313.
  20. Magoun 1954, p. 125.
  21. Hodgkin 1939.
  22. Darlington 1940, p. 648.
  23. Hodgkin 1952.

Bibliography


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