Anthony Wood

Anthony Wood (born Dec. 17, 1632, Oxford, Oxfordshire, Eng.—died Nov. 29, 1695, Oxford) was an English antiquarian whose life was devoted to collecting and publishing the history of Oxford and its university.

Wood’s historical survey of the University of Oxford and its various colleges was published as Historia et Antiquitates Universitatis Oxoniensis (1674; History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford). His vast biographical dictionary of the writers and ecclesiastics who had been educated at Oxford appeared as Athenae Oxonienses (1691–92). Wood lived in Oxford as a near recluse close to Merton College, where he matriculated and in whose chapel he was buried.

A deaf, bitter, and suspicious man, Wood quarreled with his family, patrons, and the fellows of his college. His biographical sketches contain many spiteful criticisms of contemporaries. One such passage in the Athenae Oxonienses accused the 1st Earl of Clarendon of corruption, and it led to Wood’s conviction of libel and his expulsion from the university. At his death he left his papers (including correspondence, an autobiography, and diaries) to Oxford’s Ashmolean Library. The autobiography and diaries were edited by Andrew Clark as The Life and Times of Anthony Wood (1891–1900) and abridged by L. Powys (1932, 1961). Wood’s Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford was edited by Andrew Clark and published in 1889–99.