Edwin A. Abbott

Edwin Abbott Abbott was born in 1838 to Edwin Abbott, the headmaster of the Philological School in Marylebone, England and Jane Abbott—they were first cousins. He attended the City of London School for his early education years, and then studied at St. John’s College of Cambridge, where he received highest honors in classics. He was elected to a fellowship at his college and was ordained a deacon. At the age of 25, he became a priest. In order to marry Mary Elizabeth Rangeley from Unstone, Derbyshire, he resigned the fellowship and taught at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and then at Clifton College. In 1865, he was appointed as headmaster of the City of London School and stayed there for 24 years until he retired in 1889. After he retired, Abbott devoted most of his time to his literary and theological interests. Some of his widely known works are Shakespearean Grammar (1870), Philochristus (1878), Onesimus (1882), and The Kernel and the Husk (1886), but he is best known for his novella Flatland. He died in 1926.