Cecil, Lord David

Related Category: English Literature, 20th cent. to the Present: Biographies

(sĭs´əl, sĕs–) (Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne Cecil), 1902–86, English biographer. He was professor of English literature at Oxford (1948–70). Cecil's works are all distinguished for their artistry as well as for their sound scholarship. His masterpiece is his life of Lord Melbourne, published in two volumes, The Young Melbourne (1939) and Lord M. (1954). His other works include Sir Walter Scott (1933), Jane Austen (1935), Walter Pater: Scholar Artist (1955), and Max (1964), a study of Max Beerbohm. The Cecils of Hatfield House, an English Ruling Family (1973) is about his own family.