thumb|Stopford Brooke, c. 1890

Stopford Augustus Brooke (14 November 1832 – 18 March 1916) was an Irish churchman, royal chaplain and writer.

He was born in the rectory of Glendoen, near Letterkenny, Donegal, Ireland, of which parish his maternal grandfather, Joseph Stopford, was then rector. He was the eldest son of the Rev. Richard Sinclair Brooke, later incumbent of the Mariners' church, Kingstown (now Dún Laoghaire), and was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1857 and held various charges in London. From 1863 to 1865 he was chaplain to the Empress Frederick in Berlin. In 1869 with his brother Edward he made long tours of Donegal and Sligo, and spent much time at Kells studying Irish antiquities.

He gave the inaugural lecture to the Irish Literary Society, London, on "The Need and Use of Getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue" (Bloomsbury House, 11 March 1893).

He delivered a sermon on "The Kingdom of God Within" to the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and Workers, meeting in London in May 1901.

His other works include:

  • various volumes of sermons
  • Poems (1888)
  • Dove Cottage (1890)
  • Theology in the English Poets Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Burns (1874)
  • Notes on the Liber Studiorum of J. M. W. Turner (1885; a later publication on the same subject "suggested by the writings of Mr. Ruskin")
  • Tennyson, his Art and Relation to Modern Life (1894)
  • A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the English Tongue (co-edited with his son-in-law T.W.Rolleston) (1900)
  • The Poetry of Robert Browning (1902)
  • On Ten Plays of Shakespeare (1905)
  • The Life Superlative (1906)

Brooke married Emma Wentworth-Beaumont (1830-1874) on 23 March 1858. They had six daughters, the eldest of whom was the social reformer Honor Brooke, and two sons, including Stopford Brooke, a Member of Parliament from 1906 to 1910. Brooke's second daughter Maud married T. W. Rolleston, the Irish writer; his fourth daughter Olive married L. P. Jacks, philosopher, Unitarian minister and Principal of Manchester College, Oxford; and his fifth daughter Sybil married L. Leslie Brooke, the artist of children's books: their son Henry was to become Home Secretary.

Brooke's published letters record that his work brought him into touch with most of his famous contemporaries - including Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Burne-Jones, William Morris, Viscount Bryce, James Martineau and Matthew Arnold. An art collector, he left the work The Cock Tavern at Cheam by Richard Wilson to the Tate Galleries.

References

General

Specific

  • Life and works of Stopford A. Brooke, from Ricorso
  • Mary Lago Collection at the University of Missouri Libraries