Henry Hart Milman

Henry Hart Milman combined poetry, drama, history, and church leadership across a long nineteenth-century career. Fazio: A Tragedy, first published in 1815, was his earliest verse drama and later reached the stage as The Italian Wife before a Covent Garden production restored Milman’s connection to the work. Ode on the Arrival of the Potentates in Oxford belongs to his earlier Oxford period: J. Parker printed it in 1814 together with Judicium Regale. These books show the literary ambitions that preceded his better-known historical writing. Milman had studied at Brasenose College, won Oxford’s Newdigate Prize, and later served as the university’s Professor of Poetry from 1821 to 1831. His career then moved increasingly toward scholarship and the Church of England. He became Dean of St Paul’s in 1849, while continuing to publish histories and editions. The two early titles therefore preserve the dramatic and ceremonial verse at the beginning of a career that eventually ranged far beyond poetry.