Walter Alexander Raleigh was born in London, the fifth child and only son of a local Congregationalist minister. Raleigh was educated at the City of London School, Edinburgh Academy, University College London, and King's College, Cambridge. He was Professor of English Literature at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College in Aligarh in India, Professor of Modern Literature at the University College Liverpool, Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at Glasgow University, and in 1904 became the first holder of the Chair of English Literature at Oxford University and he was a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford. Raleigh was knighted in 1911. Among his works are Style, Milton and Shakespeare, but in his day he was more renowned as a stimulating if informal lecturer than as a critic. On the outbreak of World War I he turned to the war as his primary subject. In 1915 he delivered the Vanuxem lectures at Princeton on "The Origins of Romance" and "The Beginnings of the Romantic Revival," and lectured on Chaucer at Brown, which gave him the degree of Litt.D. Raleigh's correspondence during the war revealed strong anti-German beliefs: one letter stated "German University Culture is mere evil", and added that the deaths "of 100 Boche professors... would be a benefit to the human race". His finest book may be the first volume of The War in the Air, whose volumes II to VI had to be compiled by Henry Albert Jones after Raleigh's death. Raleigh died at the Acland Nursing Home, Oxford, from typhoid on 13 May 1922, being survived by his wife Lucie Gertrude, three of their four sons, and a daughter. His daughter Philippa married the writer Charles Whibley. Raleigh is buried in the churchyard of the parish church of St. Lawrence at North Hinksey, near Oxford. His son Hilary edited his light prose, verse, and plays in Laughter from a Cloud. He is probably best known for the poem "Wishes of an Elderly Man, Wished at a Garden Party, June 1914": Raleigh Park at North Hinksey, near Harcourt Hill where he lived from 1909 to his death, is named after him. Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University considers this Shakespeare critic one of its own and has a very active ‘Raleigh Literary Society’ which regularly organises performances of scenes from Shakespeare’s plays.
