Frederic William Farrar

Frederic William Farrar
F.W. Farrar, ca. 1880s
Born	7 August 1831(1831-08-07) Bombay, India
Died	22 March 1903(1903-03-22) (aged 71) Canterbury, Kent, England
Occupation	Cleric, writer
Nationality	English
Period	19th century
Genres	Theology, children's literature

Frederic William Farrar (Mumbai, 7 August 1831 - Canterbury, 22 March 1903) was a cleric of the Church of England (Anglican).

Farrar was born in Bombay, India and educated at King William's College on the Isle of Man, King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge.^[1] At Cambridge he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for poetry in 1852.^[2] He was for some years a master at Harrow School and, from 1871 to 1876, the headmaster of Marlborough College.

Farrar became successively a canon of Westminster and rector of St Margaret's, Westminster (the church near Big Ben), archdeacon of Westminster Abbey and the Dean of Canterbury. He was an eloquent preacher and a voluminous author, his writings including stories of school life, such as Eric, or, Little by Little and St. Winifred's about life in a boys' boarding school in late Victorian England, and two historical romances.

Farrar's religious writings included Life of Christ (1874), which had great popularity, and Life of St. Paul (1879). His works were translated into many languages, especially Life of Christ.

Farrar was a believer in universal reconciliation and thought that all people would eventually be saved, a view he promoted in a series of 1877 sermons.^[3] He originated the term "abominable fancy" for the longstanding Christian idea that the eternal punishment of the damned would entertain the saved.^[4] Farrar published Eternal Hope in 1878 and Mercy and Judgment in 1881, both of which defend Christian universalism at length.^[5][6]

Farrar's daughter, Maud, was the mother of World War II British field marshal Bernard Montgomery.

Farrar has a street named after him - Dean Farrar Street in Westminster, London.

Works

• Life of Christ (1874),
• Life of St. Paul (1879),
• The Voice from Sinai (1892)

References

1. ^ Farrar, Frederick William in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ University of Cambridge (1859) (PDF). A Complete Collection of the English Poems which Have Obtained the Chancellor's Gold Medal in the University of Cambridge. Cambridge: W. Metcalfe. http://books.google.co.uk/books/pdf/A_Complete_Collection_of_the_English_Poe.pdf?id=Gw6GyHofIIAC&output=pdf. Retrieved 2008-10-01. 
3. ^ The Eternal Fate of Unbelievers, Part II, "The Witness of Church History (2): The Modern Period", excerpted and adapted from Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment by Robert A. Peterson (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing), 1995, Extract by Garry J. Moes.
4. ^ The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torment. Walker DP. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964
5. ^ F. W. Farrar. Mercy and Judgment. 1881.
6. ^ "Apocatastasis". New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. I.

External links

• Works by Frederic William Farrar at Internet Archive
• Works by Frederic William Farrar at Project Gutenberg

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London, J. M. Dent & Sons; New York, E. P. Dutton.

Church of England titles
Preceded by Robert Payne Smith	Dean of Canterbury 1895–1903	Succeeded by Henry Wace

Persondata
Name	Farrar, Frederic William
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	7 August 1831
Place of birth	Bombay, India
Date of death	22 March 1903
Place of death	Canterbury, Kent, England