George A. Aitken
George A. Aitken was a prominent English public servant and a respected scholar known for his extensive contributions to the study of English Restoration and eighteenth-century British literature. Born in Barkingside, Essex, he received a modest education, attending King's College School and University College, London, thanks to his supportive parents. Aitken embarked on a career in the civil service in 1888, where he balanced his professional responsibilities with a prolific writing career. His notable works include "The Life of Richard Steele," which showcases his ability to analyze the complexities of historical figures, and "The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot," reflecting his detailed documentation and favorable appraisal of Arbuthnot’s contributions to literature.
Throughout his career, Aitken held various significant positions, including secretary to committees focused on child welfare and reform. He also contributed to the "Dictionary of National Biography," authoring entries on influential figures from the Reformation and the eighteenth century. Later, he served as the head of the Home Office and was involved in international conferences addressing issues such as child protection. Aitken's dedication to literature and public service left a lasting impact, and he continued to write scholarly editions until his passing in 1917. He married Emma Cawthorne in 1903, marking a personal milestone in his later years.
On this Page
Subject Terms
George A. Aitken
Writer
- Born: March 19, 1860
- Birthplace: Barkingside, Essex, England
- Died: November 16, 1917
- Place of death: London, England
Biography
George Atherton Aitken successfully pursued a dual career. As he distinguished himself as a public servant, he published an impressive number of books that established him as a leading authority on the English Restoration and eighteenth century British literature.
Aitken was born in Barkingside, Essex, England, the only son of John Aitken and Mary Ann Elizabeth Salmon. Despite not being wealthy, Aitken’s parents nevertheless financed two years of his education at King’s College School (1879-1880) and two more years at University College in London (1882-1883). He won both the junior and senior class prizes; however, unable to support a life of full-time scholarship, he entered the civil service.
Soon after he began work in the office of the secretary of the General Post Office in 1888, Aitken produced his best-known book, The Life of Richard Steele. A painstaking researcher who assessed the character of his subjects as well as the quality of their writing, Aitken found Steele, one of the leading writers of the Queen Anne period of British history, to be a complex individual with clear weaknesses, such as a susceptibility to drink, debt, and licentiousness, and admirable strengths, such as generosity, great-heartedness, and an ability to tell the truth about important issues facing humankind. In addition, Steele’s depth of emotions suggested to Aitken that the traditional estimate of eighteenth century sensibilities—all reason and no emotion—was inaccurate.
In 1890, Aitken moved from the General Post Office to the Home Office, where he helped to oversee child welfare. While in that position, he wrote The Life and Works of John Arbuthnot. Again, scrupulous documentation and precise character assessment are hallmarks of the work. Arbuthnot was a noted physician who attended Queen Anne and Prince George and a member (along with Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope) of the Scriblerus Club. Arbuthnot’s literary fame rests on his satirical History of John Bull and Memoirs of Martin Scriblerus. Aitken was warmly partisan in his assessment of both the man and his period: Arbuthnot’s nobility of spirit, he found, was representative of the era.
Between 1892 and 1901, Aitken’s public service career led him to positions as secretary to the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Departmental Committee and the Inebriate Reform Committee; private secretary to Sir Kenelm Digby, K.C.B.; and permanent undersecretary of state. During this period, he continued to pursue his research, writing forty-six entries in the Dictionary of National Biography. Many of these concerned leading figures of the Reformation and eighteenth century: for example, playwrights William Wycherley and Thomas Shadwell; poets Anne Killigrew and Thomas Parnell; and Alexander Selkirk, the model for Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Also during this period, Aitken prepared scholarly editions that made available many of the major writers of British literature, from Andrew Marvell to Robert Burns.
In his later years, Aitken was made governor of University College (1902-1905), returned to the Home Office as a member of the Committee on Grants to Reformatory and Industrial Schools (1905-1910), and served as a delegate to the International Conference at Paris on White Slave Traffic and the International Congress of Brussels on the Protection of Child Life (1910 and 1911, respectively). He was head of the Home Office from 1911 to 1914 and in 1914 became chairman of the Committee on Superannuation of Officers of Reformatory and Industrial Schools. His publications of Notes on the Bibliography of Pope and Notes on the Bibliography of Matthew Prior were his last works of scholarship.
Aitken married late in life, in 1903, to Emma Cawthorne, and he died in London on November 16, 1917.