Arnold, Sir Edwin l Ed. Arnold, E. Arnold l, 1832-1904, poet, scholar, journalist. B.A. Oxford, 1854; M.A. 1856. Principal of the Deccan College, Poona, 1856-61. Joined staff of Daily Telegraph as leader writer, 1861; editor, 1873-89. Contributed to Once a Week, Fortnightly, Scribner's, and other periodicals, many of his articles dealing with his life and travels in Japan, India, and elsewhere. Published collections of his periodical articles. Author of The Marquis of Dalhousie's Administration of British India, 1862-65. Published many volumes of poems, original and translated, the most popular being The Light of Asia, 1879. C.S.I. 1877; K.C.I.E. 1888. 

      Twenty-two years after the appearance of Arnold's "Invocation" in H.W., the authorship of the lyric became the subject of a curious controversy. In revising the poem, Arnold had destroyed some of its charm by needless lengthening and by a change of title (to "A Ma Future"). Even in this form, however, the poem found admirers, among them, Francis Mahony ("Father Prout"), who copied out the lyric in 1856 on its appearance in Arnold's Griselda. Finding the MS poem among Mahony's papers in Mahony's handwriting, WilIiam Blanchard Jerrold took it to be by Mahony and reproduced it in facsimile in The Final Reliques of Father Prout, 1876. The publication of the Reliques led to a series of letters in the Athenaeum (June 24, July 15, 22, Aug. 26, 1876) concerning the authorship of the poem. After various statements and misstatements, Arnold's authorship was perforce accepted as established, though without reference to the publication of the poem in H.W., which publication Arnold had not acknowledged in his reprinting. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                   D.N.B. suppl. 1901-1911

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971. 

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography