Identity:

William Hurrell Mallock was an author and critic. He was the eldest son of the Rev. William Mallock, Rector of Cheriton Bishop, and Margaret, the daughter of the Ven. Robert Hurrell Froude, Archdeacon of Totnes, and sister of Richard Hurrell Froude, William Froude, and James Anthony Froude.

Life:

Mallock was educated at Balliol College, Oxford where he won the Newdigate prize in 1871. He was a member of The Arts Club from 1875 to 1876. In 1877 he published the successful New Republic, which discussed religion and society, with characters based on Benjamin Jowett, John Ruskin, Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater. He also wrote satires, novels, philosophical treatises and political literature. His publications include The New Paul and Virginia, or Positivism on an Island (1878), Is Life worth Living? (1879), Poems (1880), Social Equality (1882), The Old Order Changes (1886), Labour and the Popular Welfare (1893), Aristocracy and Evolution (1898), Lucretius on Life and Death in the Metre of Omar Khayyám (1900), Doctrine and Doctrinal Disruption (1900), Religion as a Credible Doctrine (1903), The Reconstruction of Belief (1905) and A Critical Examination of Socialism (1908).

Throughout his life he moved in fashionable society in London and on the Riviera. He was among those invited to a dinner on 1 May 1889 at the Criterion in Piccadilly organised by William Christian Symons to congratulate JW on being made an honorary member of the Royal Academy in Munich. However, he was unable to attend (#03982).

Bibliography:

Mallock, W. H., Memoirs of Life and Literature, London, 1920; British Library On-line Catalogue; Cochrane, A., 'William Hurrell Mallock', 1937, Dictionary of National Biography Online, Oxford, 1997 (accessed 4 October 2003).