Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) was an English barrister, Liberal politician, and essayist. Ireland’s longest-serving chief secretary, he gave the term ‘birrelling’ to light essay-writing.
Born in Wavertree, Liverpool, and educated in Amersham and at Cambridge’s Trinity Hall, Birrell was called to the bar in 1875. He was the Liberal Member of Parliament for West Fife 1889–1900 and Bristol North 1906–18. He was president of the Board of Education 1905–07 and put through the 1906 Education Act, was Chief Secretary for Ireland 1907–16, and founded the National University of Ireland 1908, resigning after the Easter Rising of 1916.
Birrell was the author of the volumes of essays Obiter Dicta (1884–87) and More Obiter Dicta (1924.) His literary charm and unassuming scholarship gave the verb ‘to birrell,’ meaning to comment on life tenderly and allusively, blending good nature with irony.
Birrell also wrote Lives of Charlotte Brontë (1887,) William Hazlitt (1902,) and Andrew Marvell (1905) for the “English Men of Letters” series of literary biographies.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Augustine Birrell
Friendship is a word the vely sight of which im print makes the heart warm.
—Augustine Birrell
Topics: Friendship
An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
—Augustine Birrell
Topics: Reading
One whom it is easier to hate, but still easier to quote—Alexander Pope.
—Augustine Birrell
Topics: Quotations
Good as it is to inherit a library, it is better to collect one.
—Augustine Birrell
Topics: Libraries
Milton calls the university A stony-hearted step-mother.
—Augustine Birrell
Topics: Education
Reading is not a duty, and has consequently no business to be made disagreeable.
—Augustine Birrell
Topics: Books, Reading
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