Mr. Porritt to Give History Course

Announcement has been made by the Department of History and Government that the half-course known as History 12b will be given during the second half of the present year by Mr. Edward Porritt of Hartford, Conn. The course will deal with the history of England in the nineteenth century.

Mr. Porritt was born at Bury, England, in 1860. He did not receive a university education but at an early age entered the profession of journalism and became connected with the Manchester Examiner. From 1886 to 1892 he represented this newspaper in the gallery of the House of Commons and thus gained an intimate knowledge of English public men and public affairs. In the latter year he came to America where he has since resided. For some years he has been the American representative of the London Morning Post and the Glasgow Herald.

Mr. Porritt has been a frequent contributor to English and American periodicals, his writings appearing regularly in the North American Review, The Outlook, and other publications. Five years ago he published his History of the Unreformed House of Commons, a very comprehensive and scholarly work in two volumes. By the large amount of patient industry which it represented, the soundness of the opinions which it contained, and the vigorous style in which it was written, this work at once commanded wide attention, and it is mainly because of the accurate and broad scholarship displayed in these volumes that Mr. Porritt was invited to give instruction at Harvard. As an active journalist Mr. Porritt is well known both in Europe and in America, and his regular letters to leading English journals on matters of American politics always interest a large circle of readers. The half-course which he is to give will deal with a field in which he possesses unusual proficiency and his lectures will doubtless be both instructive and interesting.

History 12b is ordinarily given by Professor Macvane who is absent this year on sabbatical leave.