John Oxenford.html



John Oxenford (August 12, 1812 - February 21, 1877), English dramatist, was born at Camberwell, London, England.

He began his literary career by writing on finance. He was an excellent linguist, and the author of many translations from German, notably of Goethe's Dichtung und Wahrheit (1846) and Eckermann's Conversations of Goethe (1850).

Schopenhauer

Bryan Magee, in his The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, described how Oxenford contributed to the promulgation of Schopenhauer's work. Oxenford's anonymous Westminster Review 1853 article, "Iconoclasm in German Philosophy," was written in order to present Schopenhauer as a critic of Hegel. It was translated and published in the Vossische Zeitung, which resulted in German readers showing enthusiastic and enduring interest in Schopenhauer's writings.

Drama

His first play was My Fellow Clerk, produced at the Lyceum Theatre in 1835. This was followed by a long series of pieces, the most famous of which was perhaps the Porter's Knot (1858) and Twice Killed (1835). About 1850, he became dramatic critic of The Times. He wrote a version of Last Days of Pompeii in 1872.

He died in Southwark on February 21, 1877.

Many references to his pieces will be found in The Life and Reminiscences of E. L. Blanchard (ed. C Scott and C Howard, 1891).

External links

• Works by John Oxenford at Project Gutenberg
• "John Oxenford". Catholic Encyclopedia. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11364b.htm. 

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.