Hector Munro Chadwick

H M Chadwick
Born	22 October 1870 Thornhill Lees, Yorkshire, England
Died	2 January 1947 (aged 76) Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England
Occupation	English philologist and historian

Hector Munro Chadwick (22 October 1870 – 2 January 1947) was an English philologist and historian, fellow of Clare College and professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge (1912–41),^[1] described by Peter Searby as 'one of the notable polymaths of Cambridge history'.^[2] He took a leading role in integrating the philological study of Old English with archaeology and history and, by bringing the study of Old English from the Faculty of English to Archaeology and Anthropology in 1928, founded what was to become the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.^[3] With his wife, Nora Kershaw Chadwick, he compiled a multi-volume survey of oral traditions and oral poetry, published 1932–1940. In this he further developed the theory of a Heroic Age which he had previously stated in a publication of 1912.

He was born in Thornhill, West Yorkshire, and was educated at Wakefield Grammar School and Clare College, Cambridge.^[4] He was Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Cambridge from 1912 to 1941 and has, since 1990, been commemorated by the annual H. M. Chadwick Lecture in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.^[5]

In 2015 he was the subject of the scholarly article collection H M Chadwick and the Study of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic in Cambridge, edited by Michael Lapidge (CMCS Publications).

Works

• Studies in Anglo-Saxon Institutions (1905)
• The Origin of the English Nation (1907)
• The Heroic Age (1912), https://archive.org/details/heroicage00chaduoft
• The Growth of Literature, with N. Kershaw Chadwick:

I: The Ancient Literatures of Europe (1932)

II: Russian Oral Literature, Yugoslav Oral Poetry, Early Indian Literature, Early Hebrew Literature (1936)

III: The Oral Literature of the Tatars and Polynesia, etc. (1940)

• The Study of Anglo-Saxon
• The Nationalities of Europe and the Growth of National Ideologies (1945)
• Early Scotland. The Picts the Scots & the Welsh of Southern Scotland (1949)

References

1. "H. Munro Chadwick". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2010.
2. A History of the University of Cambridge, ed. by Christopher Brooke, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988–2004), IV (Peter Searby, 1890–1990), 444.
3. A History of the University of Cambridge, ed. by Christopher Brooke, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988–2004), IV (Peter Searby, 1890–1990), 445.
4. "Chadwick, Hector Munro (CHDK889HM)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
5. "chadwick lectures". asnc.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2014-09-20.