George Gilbert Aimé Murray OM FBA (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British classical scholar and public intellectual, who served as Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1908 to 1936.
Born~Died Jan 2, 1866 ~ May 20, 1957Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 4:53 PM
George Gilbert Aimé MurrayOMFBA (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British1 classical scholar and public intellectual, who served as Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1908 to 1936. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century. He is the basis for the character of Adolphus Cusins in his friend George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara, and also appears as the chorus figure in Tony Harrison's play Fram.
Murray died in Oxford in 1957, aged 91. His ashes were interred in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.2
Early life
Murray was born in Sydney, Australia. He came from an Irish Catholic family and his ancestors fought at the Battle of the Boyne and in the 1798 Rebellion. His family all supported Irish Home Rule and were critical of the British government's actions elsewhere in . His father, Sir , who died in 1873, had been a Member of the New South Wales Parliament; Gilbert's mother, Agnes Ann Murray (née Edwards), ran a girls' school in Sydney for a few years. Then, in 1877, Agnes emigrated with Gilbert to the UK, where she died in 1891.
This page is based on “Gilbert Murray” from English Wikipedia, (r1379995527) CC BY-SA 4.0 used under the license. The original authors are listed in its page history.
Murray was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1886 in Greats with first-class honours with congratulations. He distinguished himself in writing both Greek and Latin, winning the Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose Composition, The Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse Composition, and the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin Composition.
Classicist
Academic career
From 1889 to 1899, Murray was Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow.5 There was a break in his academic career from 1899 to 1905, when he returned to Oxford; he interested himself in dramatic and political writing. After 1908 he was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford.6 In the same year he invited Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Oxford, where the Prussian philologist delivered two lectures: Greek Historical Writing and Apollo (later, he would replicate them in Cambridge).78
Murray is perhaps now best known for his verse translations of Greek drama, which were popular and prominent in their time. As a poet he was generally taken to be a follower of Swinburne and had little sympathy from the modernist poets of the rising generation.9 The staging of Athenian drama in English did have its own cultural impact.10 He had earlier experimented with his own prose dramas, without much success.
Over time he worked through almost the entire canon of Athenian dramas (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides in tragedy; Aristophanes in comedy). From Euripides, the Hippolytus and The Bacchae (together with The Frogs of Aristophanes; first edition, 1902);11 the Medea, Trojan Women, and Electra (1905–1907); Iphigenia in Tauris (1910); The Rhesus (1913) were presented at the Court Theatre, in London.12 In the United States Granville Barker and his wife Lillah McCarthy gave outdoor performances of The Trojan Women and Iphigenia in Tauris at various colleges (1915).
The translation of Œdipus Rex was a commission from W. B. Yeats.13 Until 1912 this could not have been staged for a British audience, due to its depiction of incest. Murray was drawn into the public debate on censorship that came to a head in 190714 and was pushed by William Archer, whom he knew well from Glasgow, George Bernard Shaw,15 and others such as John Galsworthy, J. M. Barrie and Edward Garnett. A petition was taken to Herbert Gladstone, then Home Secretary, early in 1908.
The Ritualists
He was one of the scholars associated with Jane Harrison in the myth-ritual school of mythography.16 They met first in 1900.17 He wrote an appendix on the Orphic tablets for her 1903 book Prolegomena; he later contributed to her Themis (1912).18
In general the ritual had its agon, or sacred combat, between the old King, or god or hero, and the new, corresponding to the agons in the tragedies, and the clear "purpose" moment of the tragic rhythm. It had its Sparagmos, in which the royal victim was literally or symbolically torn asunder, followed by the lamentation and/or rejoicing of the chorus: elements which correspond to the moments of "passion". The ritual had its messenger, its recognition scene and its epiphany; various plot devices for representing the moment of "perception" which follows the "pathos". Professor Murray, in a word, studies the art of tragedy in the light of ritual forms, and thus, throws a really new light onto Aristotle's Poetics.19
Ostracism
Murray's openly expressed pro-Home Rule and anti-imperialist views, combined with his failure to support the cause of retaining compulsory Greek, antagonised his colleagues at Oxford University, who were mostly Conservative and Unionist. In 1910, he recalled, only New College, Balliol College and Jesus College continued to send pupils to his lectures; the absence of undergraduates from Christ Church, to which his chair was attached, was particularly noticeable.20
In public life
Liberal Party politics
He was a lifelong supporter of the Liberal Party, lining up on the Irish Home Rule21 and non-imperialist sides of the splits in the party of the late nineteenth century. He supported temperance,22 and married into a prominent Liberal, aristocratic and temperance family, the Carlisles. He made a number of moves that might have taken him into parliamentary politics, initially by tentative thoughts about standing in elections during the 1890s. In 1901-2 he was in close contact with the Independent Labour Party.23 But the overall effect of the Second Boer War was to drive him back into the academic career he had put on hold in 1898, resigning his Glasgow chair (effective from April 1899).
He stood five times unsuccessfully for the University of Oxford constituency between 1919 and 1929. He continued support for the Asquith faction of Liberals, after the party was split again by Lloyd George.242526 During the 1930s the Liberals as a party were crushed electorally, but Liberal thinkers continued to write; Murray was one of the signatory Next Five Years Group formed around Clifford Allen.27
Activist
As Regius Professor and literary figure, he had a platform to promote his views, which were many-sided but Whig-liberal.28 In 1912 he wrote an introduction to The Great Analysis: A Plea for a Rational World-Order, by his friend William Archer.29
During World War I he became a pamphleteer, putting a reasoned war case. He also defended C. K. Ogden against criticism,30 and took a public interest in conscientious objection.3132 Murray never took a pacifist line himself, broke an old friendship with Bertrand Russell early in the war,33 and supported British intervention in the Suez Crisis.34
Later he was a major influence in the setting-up of Oxfam4041 and of the Students' International Union (later the Institute of World Affairs).
Involvement with Wells
For a brief period Murray became closely involved with the novelist H. G. Wells. Initially this was in 1917 and connection with groups supporting a future League: Wells promoted a League of Free Nations Association (LFNA), an idea not in fact exclusive to him, since it had been 'up in the air' since Woodrow Wilson had started considering post-war settlements. Wells applied through the British propaganda office with which Murray had been connected since 1914. The two men corresponded from 1917 about League matters.42 Wells was bullish about pushing ahead with a British LFNA, Murray was involved already in the League of Nations Society (LNS), though not active.35 The political position was delicate, as Murray understood and Wells may not have: the LNS overlapped with the Union of Democratic Control, which was too far towards the pacifist end of the spectrum of opinion to be effective in that time and context. Eventually in 1918 the LFNA was set up around Welsh Liberal MP David Davies, and then shortly the LFNA and LNS merged as the League of Nations Union.43
Two years later, Wells called on Murray, and Murray's New College colleague Ernest Barker, to lend their names as advisers on his The Outline of History. Their names duly appeared on the title page.44 Murray had to give evidence in the plagiarism case Deeks v. Wells that arose in 1925.45
Psychical research
Murray held a deep interest in psychical research.4647 Between 1916 and 1924, he conducted 236 experiments into telepathy and reported 36% as successful, although it was suggested that the results could be explained by hyperaesthesia as he could hear what was being said by the sender.4849505152
Murray identified as a humanist, and even served as a president of the British Ethical Union (later known as the British Humanist Association). He joined the Rationalist Press Association, and in 1952 was a delegate to the inaugural World Humanist Congress which founded Humanists International. He wrote and broadcast extensively on religion (Greek, Stoic and Christian); and wrote several books dealing with his version of humanism, which he espoused as a naturalistic philosophy, contrasted with Christianity and revealed religion in general.54 He was President of the British Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) from 1929 to 1930.55
A phrase from his 1910 lectures Four Stages of Greek Religion enjoyed public prominence: the "failure of nerve" of the Hellenistic world, of which a turn to irrationalism was symptomatic.56
Murray was baptised as a Roman Catholic; his father was a Catholic, his mother a Protestant. His daughter Rosalind (later Rosalind Toynbee), a Catholic convert, attacked his atheism in her book of apologetics, The Good Pagan's Failure (1939). About a month before he died, when he was bedridden, his daughter Rosalind called the local Catholic priest to see him.57 In an article in The Times following his death, however, his son Stephen made clear that Rosalind and Catholic friends did "not want it thought that they claim he died a Roman Catholic".58 Stephen said that his sister 'would not dream of making a public claim that he would re-enter the Church.'58
Murray did not raise his own children to be religious. His great-granddaughter, Polly Toynbee, followed in his footsteps, becoming President of the British Humanist Association from 2009 to 2012.
Awards and honours
He refused a knighthood in 1912,59 though he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1941. He received honorary degrees from Glasgow, Birmingham, and Oxford.60
He gave the 1914 Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy.61 He gave the 1941 Andrew Lang Lecture.
Gilbert and Lady Mary had five children, two daughters (Rosalind, 1890–1967 and Agnes Elizabeth 1894–1922) and three sons (Denis, Basil, and Stephen) including:
Denis George Murray (also known as Denys, 1892-1930). Attended Oxford. Joined Vickers Ltd in 1912. Granted Royal Aero Club pilot's certificate No.750 in a Caudron biplane at The Ewen School, Hendon on 11 March 1914. Joined the Royal Naval Air Service on 5 August 1914 as a Flight Lieutenant. Mentioned in Dispatches for his work in the bombing of Ostend, Zeebrugge and Bruges in February 1915 but was shot down near to the Dutch coast, suffering burns, and interned at Groningen, the Netherlands. He was released due to periodontitis in 1917. Although he served in the Royal Air Force in 1919 and worked in the Air Historical Branch researching for Sir Walter Raleigh's official air history, he never fully recovered and died suddenly in March 1930. He married in December 1918 Phyllis Evelyn Keller (1888–1977).66
Agnes Elizabeth Murray (1894–1922). Attended Somerville College, Oxford, but gave up her studies to spend two years nursing before serving as an RAF dispatch rider and as an ambulance driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. She died of peritonitis in France.
Stephen (February 1908 – July 1994), radical lawyer, married the architect Margaret Gillet. Stephen gave up law and became a farmer and lived at "Greenside" farm, Hallbankgate, Cumbria. He was chairman of Border Rural District Council (1962–66), of Cumberland County Council, of the Lake District Special Planning Board (1977–81) and of Cumbria County Council (1985–87). They were parents of
Gilbert, killed in climbing accident on the Fox Glacier in New Zealand in the 1950s
Alexander (Sandy), academic medievalist historian at Oxford University
Wells, Herbert George, Lionel Curtis, William Archer, Henry Wickham Steed, Alfred Zimmern, John Alfred Spender, James Bryce Bryce, and Gilbert Murray. The Idea of a League of Nations (Boston, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1919).
Andrew Lang: The PoetAndrew Lang Lecture 1947 (1948)
The Meaning of Freedom essays, with others (1956)
Humanist Essays taken from Essays and Addresses, Stoic, Christian and Humanist (1964)
Notes
Sources
West, Francis (1984). Gilbert Murray: A Life. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0312327200.
Wilson, Duncan (1987). Gilbert Murray OM. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192117816.
Further reading
Gahan, Peter. "Bernard Shaw's Dionysian Trilogy: Reworkings of Gilbert Murray's Translation of Euripides's Bacchae in Major Barbara, Misalliance, and Heartbreak House." Shaw 37.1 (2017): 28–74.
Stray, Christopher, ed. Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics (Oxford UP, 2007) DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208791.003.0013
Arnold J. Toynbee and Jean Smith (editors) (1960), An Unfinished Autobiography
Wilson, Peter. "Gilbert Murray and International Relations: Hellenism, liberalism, and international intellectual cooperation as a path to peace." Review of International Studies 37.2 (2011): 881–909. online
Wrigley, Amanda. "Greek drama in the first six decades of the twentieth century: tradition, identity, migration." Comparative drama (2010): 371–384. online
The most famous of his students there was John Buchan, whom Murray helped to take a further degree at Oxford. Archived 4 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine Others were H. N. Brailsford and Janet Spens. He left Glasgow because his health broke down. ↩
He was a noted and popular lecturer. Amongst those on whom he had a particular influence was Gilbert Highet. ↩
The correspondence between Murray and Wilamowitz is now published in The Prussian and the Poet. The Letters of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Gilbert Murray (1894–1930), ed. by A. Bierl, W. M. Calder III, R. L. Fowler (Hildesheim 1991). ↩
T. S. Eliot was rude: "As a poet, Mr. Murray is merely a very insignificant follower of the pre-Raphaelite movement." (from Euripides and Professor Murray, an essay in The Sacred Wood (1920)). Swinburne was in fact a youthful enthusiasm of Murray's, and Eliot's identification of it has stuck; but Murray probably preferred Tennyson for content among the Victorians (Mary Berenson reported this in 1903, and it still held good 50 years on (West 1984, p. 249). ↩
From the 1880s onwards, amateur performances in Greek had been popular, particularly for students dramaticals. See The Invention of Jane Harrison (2000) by Mary Beard. ↩
First published in: The Athenian Drama, vol. III: Euripides (Euripides: Hippolytus; The Bacchae. Aristophanes: The Frogs. Translated into English rhyming verse), 1902 (OCLC6591082); many reprints (together, separate, repackaged). ↩↩2↩3↩4
See The Court theatre 1904–1907: a commentary and criticism by Desmond MacCarthy, 1966 reissue with Stanley Weintraub. ↩
R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life I p. 334; early 1905. Foster also notes that Yeats and Murray corresponded about the Stage Society. Yeats was being provocative: Oedipus Rex could not be publicly presented on the British stage , because the incest was unacceptable to the censors. Foster (II p. 338) notes that it was two decades later that the play was actually performed, but by then Yeats had adapted the Murray text, and R. C. Jebb's, and made cuts, for a rather different result. ↩
Shaw was a friend, from Murray's time around 1902 looking into Fabianism—Shaw had used Murray's marriage to Lady Mary Howard in 1905 as the basis for that of Barbara and Adolphus in Major Barbara; see for example Michael Holroyd's biography of Shaw, for Murray providing ideas for Act III; also "In More Ways than One": Major Barbara's Debt to Gilbert Murray, Sidney P. Albert, Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May 1968), pp. 123–140 ↩
Noel Annan (The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses, 1999, p. 243) wrote "Gilbert Murray's remark that no one can write about Greek religion without being influenced by Jane Harrison seems truer now than when he made it." ↩
West 1984, p. 132 says 1902 in Cambridge; but Wilson 1987, p. 119 says 1900 in Switzerland. In both cases it was through A. W. Verrall. Both books say they met at Bernard Berenson's Florence home in 1903, as Harrison was finishing Prolegomena, and discussed it. ↩
Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy; reprinted in Segal, Robert A., ed. (1998). The Myth and Ritual Theory. Wiley. ISBN 9780631206804.. The editorial introduction writes (p. 95) "Murray views tragedy as the legacy of the ritualistic enactment of the myth of the life and death of Dionysius". ↩
Wilson 1987, p. 467 for details and his academic elections against Lloyd George and Bonar Law, which were equally unsuccessful. ↩
In 1921 Murray was trying a scheme on Asquith to promote a new progressive grouping under Edward Grey (West 1984, p. 184); but this proved impractical king making. ↩
"... after Lloyd George had become the Independent Liberal in 1931, many remaining Liberals participated in the Next Five Years group, who proposed an aggressive industrial policy and management of banking and finance similar to the Yellow Book. It is true that the group called themselves non-partisan, and in fact one of the core members was Harold Macmillan. However, as Freeden indicates, the Liberal tendency of the group was obvious as a whole. Geoffrey Crowther and Salter, both Liberals, were responsible for the first section of the book dealing with domestic affairs. The signatories included Layton, Rowntree, Cadbury, Isaac Foot, H. A. L. Fisher, Gilbert Murray, J. L. Hammond, and Hobson, other than several Liberal MPs." From paper by Tomoari Matsunaga, PDFArchived 21 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine. ↩
"Robert L. Fowler, who has read and reflected on a huge amount of Murray's work, places him in context: a Liberal concerned with social organization, a League of Nations supporter, a vegetarian offended by the slaughter of the Gadarene swine, decent and generous, deeply influenced by the historicism of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Murray wrote Five Stages of Greek Religion in part to 'counteract Jane Harrison's exaltation of the chthonic spirits by a vigorous defence of the Olympian deities', who for Murray characterized the Greek mind during the period of 'true Hellenism' ending with the end of the Peloponnesian War. Murray's gods were morally, intellectually, and politically good, opposing the 'megalomania and blood-lust' of earlier Greek religion and favoring the city-state." – from Daniel P. Tompkins. "William M. Calder III (ed.), The Cambridge Ritualists Reconsidered. Illinois Classical Studies". Bryn Mawr Classical Review (review). Archived from the original on 1 May 2001.. Wiliamowitz and Murray had been in touch as correspondents since the mid-1890s (Wilson1987, p. 55). ↩
It proposed the founding of an International College of Systematic Sociology. Composed of scholars and politicians from all nations, the College would monitor and interpret global affairs, its university anticipating the crises to be solved by its parliamentarians. Archer solicited the introduction from Murray for this utopian scheme, and then had it published anonymously as far as identifying himself as author. Andrew Carnegie was approached for funding, without result. (Peter Whitebrook (1993) William Archer: A Biography. p. 307.) ↩
In the case of the Quaker Stephen Hobhouse, Murray wrote an introduction to a pamphlet I appeal unto Caesar: the case of the conscientious objector by his mother Margaret. His father, Henry Hobhouse, was a Liberal MP from 1885 to 1906, and although a 'country squire' (Concise Dictionary of National Biography) was a Privy Councillor; and brother to L. T. Hobhouse, an old friend of Murray's. Murray was incensed at the treatment meted out to Stephen Hobhouse, who had been rejected as not a genuine objector of conscience (The Soul as It is and How to Deal with It, 1918 paperArchived 3 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine), and further wrote an introduction to Hobhouse's post-war book on prisons. ↩
Murray was active in helping Russell when the latter was imprisoned; see West 1984, p. 145 on pacifism, Wilson 1987, p. 241 on aid to Russell. Murray, close to H. H. Asquith, had no time for David Lloyd George who displaced him as prime minister. ↩
Eayrs, James (1964). The Commonwealth and Suez: A Documentary Survey. Oxford University Press. pp. 202–203. ↩
Murray's League activities extended to post-WWI intellectual revival, where he spoke up for funding for Germany (then not a League member); see E. M. Forster's life of Murray's deputy Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson. ↩
Oxfam was not initially known by that name at that point, post-WWII. "A leading figure in this campaign was Professor Gilbert Murray (1866–1957). ... He was a founder of the League of Nations Union, a citizen support group for international peace. As famine in Greece became severe in the autumn of 1941 the League of Nations Union appointed a 'Committee on Starvation in Occupied Countries'. In October 1941 Murray and Lord Robert Cecil, Viscount Chelwood (1864–1958), joint presidents, sought a meeting with the Ministry of Economic Warfare to establish whether anything more could be done to relieve starvation in occupied countries. ... Murray remained in Oxford after his retirement and was closely associated with the development of Oxfam as a founder and trustee. After the war he was joint president, 1945–1947 and 1949–1957, and sole president, 1947–1949, of the United Nations Association." "About Us – History", Oxfam Archived 17 July 2004 at the Wayback Machine↩
A. B. McKillop, The Spinster and the Prophet (2000) p. 143 ↩
"[The FNLA] members were mostly good haters of Germany and people of importance and influence ... The idea of a League was becoming reputable chiefly owing to President Wilson ... The 'Society' [LNS] sent its chairman W. H. Dickinson, G.L.D., J. A. Hobson and L. S. Woolf. The 'Association' [LFNA] sent C. A. McCurdy, Gilbert Murray, Wickham Steed, H. G. Wells. The dinner was a success ..." E. M. Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, p. 169. ↩
McKillop, The Spinster and the Prophet covers this all thoroughly ↩
Lowe, N. (2007). Gilbert Murray and Psychic Research. In Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics, edited by Christopher Stray. Oxford University Press. pp. 349–370. ISBN 978-0-19-920879-1 ↩
Carruthers, William. (2015). Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures. Routledge. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-415-84369-0 ↩
Couttie, Bob. (1988). Forbidden Knowledge: The Paranormal Paradox. Lutterworth Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-7188-2686-4 "In the early 1900s Gilbert Murray, who died in 1957, carried out some experiments in ESP in which he was in one room and the sender in a hallway, often with an open door between them. These experiments were successful. Most of the time the target was spoken aloud. When it was not, there were negative results. This is suggestive of a hyperacuity of hearing, especially since on at least one occasion Murray complained about noise coming from a milk-cart in the street next to the one in which the experiments were being carried out." ↩
Mauskopf, Seymour H; McVaugh, Michael Rogers. (1980). The Elusive Science: Origins of Experimental Psychical Research. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 331. ISBN 978-0-8018-2331-2 ↩
Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren H. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-805-80507-9 ↩
Anderson, Rodger. (2006). Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules: A Biographical Dictionary with Bibliographies. McFarland. p. 126. ISBN 0-7864-2770-1 ↩
No one was exactly sure what Murray believed. His publisher Stanley Unwin took him as Rationalist and not Christian, but found him most Christian-like. (Memoirs of a Publisher). Ford Madox Ford, not always a reliable witness, describes in Return to Yesterday (p. 229) a rigmarole Murray produced at a house party of Edward Clodd's, around 1905: Murray had some sort of patent faith of which all I can remember is that a black velvet coffin played a part in it. Murray's interest in some aspects of parapsychology is well documented. A. R. Orage's criticism of Murray (The New Age, 1913) as 'eclectic' applies. E. R. Dodds, Murray's pupil and successor, was advised to keep away from religion; Dodds might be taken as a more explicit rationalist in a line descending from Frazer. Murray's view on religion wasn't really separate from his Whiggishness. ↩
Stephen Weldon, writing on a humanist siteArchived 6 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine, argues that In many ways, the failure of nerve thesis was merely one version of an anticlerical view of history common during the Enlightenment period, a view that depicted the religionists as cowards and the rationalists as heroes. Murray's innovation was to encapsulate that attitude in a compelling argument, expressing historical causality in terms of individual psychology. Weldon goes on to point to the way Sidney Hook later took up the theme. ↩
"The Faith and Dr Gilbert Murray", John Crozier, New Blackfriars, vol. 72, issue 848, pp. 188–193, April 1991 ↩
Schmadel, Lutz D. (2007). "(941) Murray". Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – (941) Murray. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. p. 83. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_942. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3. ↩
George Gilbert Aimé MurrayOMFBA (2 January 1866 – 20 May 1957) was an Australian-born British1 classical scholar and public intellectual, who served as Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford from 1908 to 1936. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century. He is the basis for the character of Adolphus Cusins in his friend George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara, and also appears as the chorus figure in Tony Harrison's play Fram.
Murray died in Oxford in 1957, aged 91. His ashes were interred in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.2
Early life
Murray was born in Sydney, Australia. He came from an Irish Catholic family and his ancestors fought at the and in the . His family all supported and were critical of the British government's actions elsewhere in . His father, Sir , who died in 1873, had been a Member of the New South Wales Parliament; Gilbert's mother, Agnes Ann Murray (née Edwards), ran a girls' school in Sydney for a few years. Then, in 1877, Agnes emigrated with Gilbert to the UK, where she died in 1891.
Murray was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and St John's College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1886 in Greats with first-class honours with congratulations. He distinguished himself in writing both Greek and Latin, winning the Gaisford Prize for Greek Prose Composition, The Gaisford Prize for Greek Verse Composition, and the Chancellor’s Prize for Latin Composition.
Classicist
Academic career
From 1889 to 1899, Murray was Professor of Greek at the University of Glasgow.5 There was a break in his academic career from 1899 to 1905, when he returned to Oxford; he interested himself in dramatic and political writing. After 1908 he was Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford.6 In the same year he invited Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Oxford, where the Prussian philologist delivered two lectures: Greek Historical Writing and Apollo (later, he would replicate them in Cambridge).78
Murray is perhaps now best known for his verse translations of Greek drama, which were popular and prominent in their time. As a poet he was generally taken to be a follower of Swinburne and had little sympathy from the modernist poets of the rising generation.9 The staging of Athenian drama in English did have its own cultural impact.10 He had earlier experimented with his own prose dramas, without much success.
Over time he worked through almost the entire canon of Athenian dramas (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides in tragedy; Aristophanes in comedy). From Euripides, the Hippolytus and The Bacchae (together with The Frogs of Aristophanes; first edition, 1902);11 the Medea, Trojan Women, and Electra (1905–1907); Iphigenia in Tauris (1910); The Rhesus (1913) were presented at the Court Theatre, in London.12 In the United States Granville Barker and his wife Lillah McCarthy gave outdoor performances of The Trojan Women and Iphigenia in Tauris at various colleges (1915).
The translation of Œdipus Rex was a commission from W. B. Yeats.13 Until 1912 this could not have been staged for a British audience, due to its depiction of incest. Murray was drawn into the public debate on censorship that came to a head in 190714 and was pushed by William Archer, whom he knew well from Glasgow, George Bernard Shaw,15 and others such as John Galsworthy, J. M. Barrie and Edward Garnett. A petition was taken to Herbert Gladstone, then Home Secretary, early in 1908.
The Ritualists
He was one of the scholars associated with Jane Harrison in the myth-ritual school of mythography.16 They met first in 1900.17 He wrote an appendix on the Orphic tablets for her 1903 book Prolegomena; he later contributed to her Themis (1912).18
In general the ritual had its agon, or sacred combat, between the old King, or god or hero, and the new, corresponding to the agons in the tragedies, and the clear "purpose" moment of the tragic rhythm. It had its Sparagmos, in which the royal victim was literally or symbolically torn asunder, followed by the lamentation and/or rejoicing of the chorus: elements which correspond to the moments of "passion". The ritual had its messenger, its recognition scene and its epiphany; various plot devices for representing the moment of "perception" which follows the "pathos". Professor Murray, in a word, studies the art of tragedy in the light of ritual forms, and thus, throws a really new light onto Aristotle's Poetics.19
Ostracism
Murray's openly expressed pro-Home Rule and anti-imperialist views, combined with his failure to support the cause of retaining compulsory Greek, antagonised his colleagues at Oxford University, who were mostly Conservative and Unionist. In 1910, he recalled, only New College, Balliol College and Jesus College continued to send pupils to his lectures; the absence of undergraduates from Christ Church, to which his chair was attached, was particularly noticeable.20
In public life
Liberal Party politics
He was a lifelong supporter of the Liberal Party, lining up on the Irish Home Rule21 and non-imperialist sides of the splits in the party of the late nineteenth century. He supported temperance,22 and married into a prominent Liberal, aristocratic and temperance family, the Carlisles. He made a number of moves that might have taken him into parliamentary politics, initially by tentative thoughts about standing in elections during the 1890s. In 1901-2 he was in close contact with the Independent Labour Party.23 But the overall effect of the Second Boer War was to drive him back into the academic career he had put on hold in 1898, resigning his Glasgow chair (effective from April 1899).
He stood five times unsuccessfully for the University of Oxford constituency between 1919 and 1929. He continued support for the Asquith faction of Liberals, after the party was split again by Lloyd George.242526 During the 1930s the Liberals as a party were crushed electorally, but Liberal thinkers continued to write; Murray was one of the signatory Next Five Years Group formed around Clifford Allen.27
Activist
As Regius Professor and literary figure, he had a platform to promote his views, which were many-sided but Whig-liberal.28 In 1912 he wrote an introduction to The Great Analysis: A Plea for a Rational World-Order, by his friend William Archer.29
During World War I he became a pamphleteer, putting a reasoned war case. He also defended C. K. Ogden against criticism,30 and took a public interest in conscientious objection.3132 Murray never took a pacifist line himself, broke an old friendship with Bertrand Russell early in the war,33 and supported British intervention in the Suez Crisis.34
Later he was a major influence in the setting-up of Oxfam4041 and of the Students' International Union (later the Institute of World Affairs).
Involvement with Wells
For a brief period Murray became closely involved with the novelist H. G. Wells. Initially this was in 1917 and connection with groups supporting a future League: Wells promoted a League of Free Nations Association (LFNA), an idea not in fact exclusive to him, since it had been 'up in the air' since Woodrow Wilson had started considering post-war settlements. Wells applied through the British propaganda office with which Murray had been connected since 1914. The two men corresponded from 1917 about League matters.42 Wells was bullish about pushing ahead with a British LFNA, Murray was involved already in the League of Nations Society (LNS), though not active.35 The political position was delicate, as Murray understood and Wells may not have: the LNS overlapped with the Union of Democratic Control, which was too far towards the pacifist end of the spectrum of opinion to be effective in that time and context. Eventually in 1918 the LFNA was set up around Welsh Liberal MP David Davies, and then shortly the LFNA and LNS merged as the League of Nations Union.43
Two years later, Wells called on Murray, and Murray's New College colleague Ernest Barker, to lend their names as advisers on his The Outline of History. Their names duly appeared on the title page.44 Murray had to give evidence in the plagiarism case Deeks v. Wells that arose in 1925.45
Psychical research
Murray held a deep interest in psychical research.4647 Between 1916 and 1924, he conducted 236 experiments into telepathy and reported 36% as successful, although it was suggested that the results could be explained by hyperaesthesia as he could hear what was being said by the sender.4849505152
Murray identified as a humanist, and even served as a president of the British Ethical Union (later known as the British Humanist Association). He joined the Rationalist Press Association, and in 1952 was a delegate to the inaugural World Humanist Congress which founded Humanists International. He wrote and broadcast extensively on religion (Greek, Stoic and Christian); and wrote several books dealing with his version of humanism, which he espoused as a naturalistic philosophy, contrasted with Christianity and revealed religion in general.54 He was President of the British Ethical Union (now Humanists UK) from 1929 to 1930.55
A phrase from his 1910 lectures Four Stages of Greek Religion enjoyed public prominence: the "failure of nerve" of the Hellenistic world, of which a turn to irrationalism was symptomatic.56
Murray was baptised as a Roman Catholic; his father was a Catholic, his mother a Protestant. His daughter Rosalind (later Rosalind Toynbee), a Catholic convert, attacked his atheism in her book of apologetics, The Good Pagan's Failure (1939). About a month before he died, when he was bedridden, his daughter Rosalind called the local Catholic priest to see him.57 In an article in The Times following his death, however, his son Stephen made clear that Rosalind and Catholic friends did "not want it thought that they claim he died a Roman Catholic".58 Stephen said that his sister 'would not dream of making a public claim that he would re-enter the Church.'58
Murray did not raise his own children to be religious. His great-granddaughter, Polly Toynbee, followed in his footsteps, becoming President of the British Humanist Association from 2009 to 2012.
Awards and honours
He refused a knighthood in 1912,59 though he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1941. He received honorary degrees from Glasgow, Birmingham, and Oxford.60
He gave the 1914 Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy.61 He gave the 1941 Andrew Lang Lecture.
Gilbert and Lady Mary had five children, two daughters (Rosalind, 1890–1967 and Agnes Elizabeth 1894–1922) and three sons (Denis, Basil, and Stephen) including:
Denis George Murray (also known as Denys, 1892-1930). Attended Oxford. Joined Vickers Ltd in 1912. Granted Royal Aero Club pilot's certificate No.750 in a Caudron biplane at The Ewen School, Hendon on 11 March 1914. Joined the Royal Naval Air Service on 5 August 1914 as a Flight Lieutenant. Mentioned in Dispatches for his work in the bombing of Ostend, Zeebrugge and Bruges in February 1915 but was shot down near to the Dutch coast, suffering burns, and interned at Groningen, the Netherlands. He was released due to periodontitis in 1917. Although he served in the Royal Air Force in 1919 and worked in the Air Historical Branch researching for Sir Walter Raleigh's official air history, he never fully recovered and died suddenly in March 1930. He married in December 1918 Phyllis Evelyn Keller (1888–1977).66
Agnes Elizabeth Murray (1894–1922). Attended Somerville College, Oxford, but gave up her studies to spend two years nursing before serving as an RAF dispatch rider and as an ambulance driver for the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps. She died of peritonitis in France.
Stephen (February 1908 – July 1994), radical lawyer, married the architect Margaret Gillet. Stephen gave up law and became a farmer and lived at "Greenside" farm, Hallbankgate, Cumbria. He was chairman of Border Rural District Council (1962–66), of Cumberland County Council, of the Lake District Special Planning Board (1977–81) and of Cumbria County Council (1985–87). They were parents of
Gilbert, killed in climbing accident on the Fox Glacier in New Zealand in the 1950s
Alexander (Sandy), academic medievalist historian at Oxford University
Wells, Herbert George, Lionel Curtis, William Archer, Henry Wickham Steed, Alfred Zimmern, John Alfred Spender, James Bryce Bryce, and Gilbert Murray. The Idea of a League of Nations (Boston, The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1919).
Andrew Lang: The PoetAndrew Lang Lecture 1947 (1948)
The Meaning of Freedom essays, with others (1956)
Humanist Essays taken from Essays and Addresses, Stoic, Christian and Humanist (1964)
Notes
Sources
West, Francis (1984). Gilbert Murray: A Life. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0312327200.
Wilson, Duncan (1987). Gilbert Murray OM. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192117816.
Further reading
Gahan, Peter. "Bernard Shaw's Dionysian Trilogy: Reworkings of Gilbert Murray's Translation of Euripides's Bacchae in Major Barbara, Misalliance, and Heartbreak House." Shaw 37.1 (2017): 28–74.
Stray, Christopher, ed. Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics (Oxford UP, 2007) DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199208791.003.0013
Arnold J. Toynbee and Jean Smith (editors) (1960), An Unfinished Autobiography
Wilson, Peter. "Gilbert Murray and International Relations: Hellenism, liberalism, and international intellectual cooperation as a path to peace." Review of International Studies 37.2 (2011): 881–909. online
Wrigley, Amanda. "Greek drama in the first six decades of the twentieth century: tradition, identity, migration." Comparative drama (2010): 371–384. online
The most famous of his students there was John Buchan, whom Murray helped to take a further degree at Oxford. Archived 4 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine Others were H. N. Brailsford and Janet Spens. He left Glasgow because his health broke down. ↩
He was a noted and popular lecturer. Amongst those on whom he had a particular influence was Gilbert Highet. ↩
The correspondence between Murray and Wilamowitz is now published in The Prussian and the Poet. The Letters of Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff to Gilbert Murray (1894–1930), ed. by A. Bierl, W. M. Calder III, R. L. Fowler (Hildesheim 1991). ↩
T. S. Eliot was rude: "As a poet, Mr. Murray is merely a very insignificant follower of the pre-Raphaelite movement." (from Euripides and Professor Murray, an essay in The Sacred Wood (1920)). Swinburne was in fact a youthful enthusiasm of Murray's, and Eliot's identification of it has stuck; but Murray probably preferred Tennyson for content among the Victorians (Mary Berenson reported this in 1903, and it still held good 50 years on (West 1984, p. 249). ↩
From the 1880s onwards, amateur performances in Greek had been popular, particularly for students dramaticals. See The Invention of Jane Harrison (2000) by Mary Beard. ↩
First published in: The Athenian Drama, vol. III: Euripides (Euripides: Hippolytus; The Bacchae. Aristophanes: The Frogs. Translated into English rhyming verse), 1902 (OCLC6591082); many reprints (together, separate, repackaged). ↩↩2↩3↩4
See The Court theatre 1904–1907: a commentary and criticism by Desmond MacCarthy, 1966 reissue with Stanley Weintraub. ↩
R. F. Foster, W. B. Yeats: A Life I p. 334; early 1905. Foster also notes that Yeats and Murray corresponded about the Stage Society. Yeats was being provocative: Oedipus Rex could not be publicly presented on the British stage , because the incest was unacceptable to the censors. Foster (II p. 338) notes that it was two decades later that the play was actually performed, but by then Yeats had adapted the Murray text, and R. C. Jebb's, and made cuts, for a rather different result. ↩
Shaw was a friend, from Murray's time around 1902 looking into Fabianism—Shaw had used Murray's marriage to Lady Mary Howard in 1905 as the basis for that of Barbara and Adolphus in Major Barbara; see for example Michael Holroyd's biography of Shaw, for Murray providing ideas for Act III; also "In More Ways than One": Major Barbara's Debt to Gilbert Murray, Sidney P. Albert, Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 20, No. 2 (May 1968), pp. 123–140 ↩
Noel Annan (The Dons: Mentors, Eccentrics and Geniuses, 1999, p. 243) wrote "Gilbert Murray's remark that no one can write about Greek religion without being influenced by Jane Harrison seems truer now than when he made it." ↩
West 1984, p. 132 says 1902 in Cambridge; but Wilson 1987, p. 119 says 1900 in Switzerland. In both cases it was through A. W. Verrall. Both books say they met at Bernard Berenson's Florence home in 1903, as Harrison was finishing Prolegomena, and discussed it. ↩
Excursus on the Ritual Forms Preserved in Greek Tragedy; reprinted in Segal, Robert A., ed. (1998). The Myth and Ritual Theory. Wiley. ISBN 9780631206804.. The editorial introduction writes (p. 95) "Murray views tragedy as the legacy of the ritualistic enactment of the myth of the life and death of Dionysius". ↩
Wilson 1987, p. 467 for details and his academic elections against Lloyd George and Bonar Law, which were equally unsuccessful. ↩
In 1921 Murray was trying a scheme on Asquith to promote a new progressive grouping under Edward Grey (West 1984, p. 184); but this proved impractical king making. ↩
"... after Lloyd George had become the Independent Liberal in 1931, many remaining Liberals participated in the Next Five Years group, who proposed an aggressive industrial policy and management of banking and finance similar to the Yellow Book. It is true that the group called themselves non-partisan, and in fact one of the core members was Harold Macmillan. However, as Freeden indicates, the Liberal tendency of the group was obvious as a whole. Geoffrey Crowther and Salter, both Liberals, were responsible for the first section of the book dealing with domestic affairs. The signatories included Layton, Rowntree, Cadbury, Isaac Foot, H. A. L. Fisher, Gilbert Murray, J. L. Hammond, and Hobson, other than several Liberal MPs." From paper by Tomoari Matsunaga, PDFArchived 21 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine. ↩
"Robert L. Fowler, who has read and reflected on a huge amount of Murray's work, places him in context: a Liberal concerned with social organization, a League of Nations supporter, a vegetarian offended by the slaughter of the Gadarene swine, decent and generous, deeply influenced by the historicism of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff. Murray wrote Five Stages of Greek Religion in part to 'counteract Jane Harrison's exaltation of the chthonic spirits by a vigorous defence of the Olympian deities', who for Murray characterized the Greek mind during the period of 'true Hellenism' ending with the end of the Peloponnesian War. Murray's gods were morally, intellectually, and politically good, opposing the 'megalomania and blood-lust' of earlier Greek religion and favoring the city-state." – from Daniel P. Tompkins. "William M. Calder III (ed.), The Cambridge Ritualists Reconsidered. Illinois Classical Studies". Bryn Mawr Classical Review (review). Archived from the original on 1 May 2001.. Wiliamowitz and Murray had been in touch as correspondents since the mid-1890s (Wilson1987, p. 55). ↩
It proposed the founding of an International College of Systematic Sociology. Composed of scholars and politicians from all nations, the College would monitor and interpret global affairs, its university anticipating the crises to be solved by its parliamentarians. Archer solicited the introduction from Murray for this utopian scheme, and then had it published anonymously as far as identifying himself as author. Andrew Carnegie was approached for funding, without result. (Peter Whitebrook (1993) William Archer: A Biography. p. 307.) ↩
In the case of the Quaker Stephen Hobhouse, Murray wrote an introduction to a pamphlet I appeal unto Caesar: the case of the conscientious objector by his mother Margaret. His father, Henry Hobhouse, was a Liberal MP from 1885 to 1906, and although a 'country squire' (Concise Dictionary of National Biography) was a Privy Councillor; and brother to L. T. Hobhouse, an old friend of Murray's. Murray was incensed at the treatment meted out to Stephen Hobhouse, who had been rejected as not a genuine objector of conscience (The Soul as It is and How to Deal with It, 1918 paperArchived 3 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine), and further wrote an introduction to Hobhouse's post-war book on prisons. ↩
Murray was active in helping Russell when the latter was imprisoned; see West 1984, p. 145 on pacifism, Wilson 1987, p. 241 on aid to Russell. Murray, close to H. H. Asquith, had no time for David Lloyd George who displaced him as prime minister. ↩
Eayrs, James (1964). The Commonwealth and Suez: A Documentary Survey. Oxford University Press. pp. 202–203. ↩
Murray's League activities extended to post-WWI intellectual revival, where he spoke up for funding for Germany (then not a League member); see E. M. Forster's life of Murray's deputy Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson. ↩
Oxfam was not initially known by that name at that point, post-WWII. "A leading figure in this campaign was Professor Gilbert Murray (1866–1957). ... He was a founder of the League of Nations Union, a citizen support group for international peace. As famine in Greece became severe in the autumn of 1941 the League of Nations Union appointed a 'Committee on Starvation in Occupied Countries'. In October 1941 Murray and Lord Robert Cecil, Viscount Chelwood (1864–1958), joint presidents, sought a meeting with the Ministry of Economic Warfare to establish whether anything more could be done to relieve starvation in occupied countries. ... Murray remained in Oxford after his retirement and was closely associated with the development of Oxfam as a founder and trustee. After the war he was joint president, 1945–1947 and 1949–1957, and sole president, 1947–1949, of the United Nations Association." "About Us – History", Oxfam Archived 17 July 2004 at the Wayback Machine↩
A. B. McKillop, The Spinster and the Prophet (2000) p. 143 ↩
"[The FNLA] members were mostly good haters of Germany and people of importance and influence ... The idea of a League was becoming reputable chiefly owing to President Wilson ... The 'Society' [LNS] sent its chairman W. H. Dickinson, G.L.D., J. A. Hobson and L. S. Woolf. The 'Association' [LFNA] sent C. A. McCurdy, Gilbert Murray, Wickham Steed, H. G. Wells. The dinner was a success ..." E. M. Forster, Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, p. 169. ↩
McKillop, The Spinster and the Prophet covers this all thoroughly ↩
Lowe, N. (2007). Gilbert Murray and Psychic Research. In Gilbert Murray Reassessed: Hellenism, Theatre, and International Politics, edited by Christopher Stray. Oxford University Press. pp. 349–370. ISBN 978-0-19-920879-1 ↩
Carruthers, William. (2015). Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures. Routledge. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-415-84369-0 ↩
Couttie, Bob. (1988). Forbidden Knowledge: The Paranormal Paradox. Lutterworth Press. p. 129. ISBN 978-0-7188-2686-4 "In the early 1900s Gilbert Murray, who died in 1957, carried out some experiments in ESP in which he was in one room and the sender in a hallway, often with an open door between them. These experiments were successful. Most of the time the target was spoken aloud. When it was not, there were negative results. This is suggestive of a hyperacuity of hearing, especially since on at least one occasion Murray complained about noise coming from a milk-cart in the street next to the one in which the experiments were being carried out." ↩
Mauskopf, Seymour H; McVaugh, Michael Rogers. (1980). The Elusive Science: Origins of Experimental Psychical Research. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 331. ISBN 978-0-8018-2331-2 ↩
Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren H. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-805-80507-9 ↩
Anderson, Rodger. (2006). Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules: A Biographical Dictionary with Bibliographies. McFarland. p. 126. ISBN 0-7864-2770-1 ↩
No one was exactly sure what Murray believed. His publisher Stanley Unwin took him as Rationalist and not Christian, but found him most Christian-like. (Memoirs of a Publisher). Ford Madox Ford, not always a reliable witness, describes in Return to Yesterday (p. 229) a rigmarole Murray produced at a house party of Edward Clodd's, around 1905: Murray had some sort of patent faith of which all I can remember is that a black velvet coffin played a part in it. Murray's interest in some aspects of parapsychology is well documented. A. R. Orage's criticism of Murray (The New Age, 1913) as 'eclectic' applies. E. R. Dodds, Murray's pupil and successor, was advised to keep away from religion; Dodds might be taken as a more explicit rationalist in a line descending from Frazer. Murray's view on religion wasn't really separate from his Whiggishness. ↩
Stephen Weldon, writing on a humanist siteArchived 6 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine, argues that In many ways, the failure of nerve thesis was merely one version of an anticlerical view of history common during the Enlightenment period, a view that depicted the religionists as cowards and the rationalists as heroes. Murray's innovation was to encapsulate that attitude in a compelling argument, expressing historical causality in terms of individual psychology. Weldon goes on to point to the way Sidney Hook later took up the theme. ↩
"The Faith and Dr Gilbert Murray", John Crozier, New Blackfriars, vol. 72, issue 848, pp. 188–193, April 1991 ↩
Schmadel, Lutz D. (2007). "(941) Murray". Dictionary of Minor Planet Names – (941) Murray. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. p. 83. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_942. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3. ↩