1881 Cartoon from Punch: "PROFESSOR FAWCETT, M.P and P.M.G., A Politician of a certain stamp, and President of the Republic of Letters at St. Martin-le-Grand's" He was born in Salisbury, and educated at Cambridge University, where he became Fellow of Trinity Hall.
In 1858, when he was 25, he was blinded by a shooting accident, in spite of which he continued with his studies, especially in economics, and in 1863 published his Manual of Political Economy, becoming in the same year Professor of Political Economy in Cambridge.
After repeated defeats he was elected MP for Brighton in 1865. He campaigned for women's suffrage, and through this met his wife Millicent Garrett whom he married in 1867.
In 1880 he was appointed Postmaster-General. He introduced many innovations, including parcel post, postal orders, and licensing changes to permit payphones and trunk lines.
His career was, however, cut short by his premature death from pleurisy, but not before he had made himself a recognised authority on economics, his works on which include The Economic Position of the British Labourer (1871), Labour and Wages, etc.
Sir Leslie Stephen wrote a biography of him, Life of Henry Fawcett, in 1885.
- This article is originally from A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature.
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