Myers, Frederic William Henry

Person

Myers, Frederic William Henry

6 February 1843 - 17 January 1901

Frederic William Henry Myers (6 February 1843, in Keswick, Cumberland - 17 January 1901, in Rome) was a poet, classicist, philologist, and a founder of the Society for Psychical Research. Myers' work on psychical research and his ideas about a "subliminal self" have not been accepted by the scientific community. Myers was the son of Revd Frederic Myers (1811-1851) and his second wife Susan Harriet Myers nee Marshall (1811-1896). He was a brother of poet Ernest Myers (1844-1921) and of Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers (1851-1894). His maternal grandfather was the wealthy industrialist John Marshall (1765-1845).

Myers was educated at Cheltenham College and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1865, and university prizes, including the Bell, Craven, Camden and Chancellor's Medal, though he was forced to resign the Camden medal for 1863 after accusations of plagiarism. He was a Fellow of Trinity College from 1865 to 1874 and college lecturer in classics from 1865 to 1869. In 1872 be became an Inspector of schools.

In 1867, Myers published a long poem, St Paul, which became popular. It was followed in 1882 by The Renewal of Youth and Other Poems. He also wrote books of literary criticism, in particular Wordsworth (1881) and Essays, Classical and Modern (in two volumes, 1883), which included an essay on Virgil. As a young man, Myers was a homosexual. He was involved in homosexual relationships with Arthur Sidgwick and the poet John Addington Symonds. He later fell in love with the medium Annie Eliza, the wife of his cousin Walter James Marshall and they had an affair. Myer's relationship with his cousin's wife was described as sexual. Annie committed suicide in September 1876 by drowning.

The British occult writer Richard Cavendish wrote "According to his own statement, he [Myers] had very strong sexual inclinations, which he indulged. These would seem to have been mainly homosexual in his youth, but in later life he was wholly heterosexual." In 1880, Myers married Eveleen Tennant (1856-1937), daughter of Charles Tennant and Gertrude Tennant. They had two sons, the elder the novelist Leopold Hamilton Myers (1881-1944), and a daughter. English author Ronald Pearsall wrote that Myers had sexual interests in the young lady mediums that he investigated. The researcher Trevor H. Hall argued that Myers had an affair with the medium Ada Goodrich Freer. Myers was interested in psychical research and was one of the founder members of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1883. He became the President in 1900. Myers has been described as an "important early depth psychologist" who influenced William James, Pierre Janet, Th

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Created 2015-10-29 by Anna St.Onge.

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