Description

Alfred Ainger (1837-1904) was an English biographer, critic, and churchman. He was educated at King's College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, from where he entered the church and, after holding various minor preferments, became Master of the Temple in 1894. He was appointed Honorary Chaplain to Queen Victoria in 1895, and Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty the following year. Best known for his biography of Charles Lamb, he also wrote memoirs of Thomas Hood and George Crabbe. Crabbe (1754-1832) was an English poet, surgeon, and clergyman described by Byron as "nature's sternest painter, yet the best." His poetry was predominantly in the form of heroic couplets, and is unsentimental in its depiction of provincial life and society. His notable works include The Village (1783), and The Borough (1810). Ainger's biography of George Crabbe was published in 1903 in the second of Macmillan's English Men of Letters series, under the general editorship of John Morley