Edwin A. Abbott

Edwin Abbott Abbott's parents were Jane Abbott and Edwin Abbott. His mother Jane was a first cousin of his father, so both had the name of Abbott which explains Edwin Abbott Abbott having 'Abbott' as both a surname and a middle name. Edwin Abbott was headmaster of the Philological School at Marylebone.

Abbott was educated at the City of London School which had gained a fine reputation under Dr G F W Mortimer who was headmaster throughout the years during which he studied there. Following a fine school education, Abbott entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1857. After an outstanding academic career as an undergraduate he was the Senior Classics medallist in 1861 and was elected to a fellowship at his college in the following year. In the same year he was ordained a deacon and in 1863 he became a priest. At this time College fellows were not allowed to marry so, when Abbott wished to marry Mary Elizabeth Rangeley from Unstone, Derbyshire, in 1863, he had to resign the fellowship. Edwin and Mary had one son and one daughter.

After leaving Cambridge, Abbott taught at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and then at Clifton College. In 1865 he was appointed as headmaster of the City of London School on the retirement of his former headmaster Dr Mortimer. It was a post which Abbott held for 24 years until he retired in 1889. Of course Abbott was relatively young when he retired being only 50 years old. He did not retire to give up work, rather he enjoyed writing and retired so that he could devote more time to his literary efforts.

He made many innovations to the curriculum taught at the school in addition to the sciences referred to in the above quote, and he transmitted his own enthusiasm for literature, both English literature and classical literature, to pupils at the school.

As a scholar, Abbott was very broad writing excellent works on a wide variety of topics. He published Shakespearean Grammar (1870), English Lessons for English People (1871) and How to Write Clearly (1872). He was a leading expert on Francis Bacon, published Bacon and Essex (1877) and wrote an introduction to Bacon's Essays (1886). Some of his works on textual criticism contain excellent statistical analyses, for example Johannine Vocabulary (1905) and Johannine Grammar (1906). Among numerous religious writings we mention Philochristus (1878), Onesimus: Memoirs of a Disciple of Paul (1882), and Silanus the Christian (1906).

In Abbott's Flatland, the more sides you have then the higher is your class. Workers are equilateral triangles, the author himself is A Square, a person of middle class, while the highest classes are the circles who are priests. The Flatland world is visited by a sphere which A Square sees at first as a dot which grows into a disk, then shrinks again to a dot and vanishes. The sphere opens his eyes to the possibility of a third dimension, and he suggests to the sphere that he might live in a world with four or more dimensions, but the sphere makes fun of this suggestion. When A Square tells his fellow Flatlanders about the third dimension they ridicule him, and eventually he is put in prision where he writes the book. Abbott died of influenza at his home, Wellside, Well Walk in Hampstead, and was buried in Hampstead cemetery.