Edwin A. Abbott

Edwin Abbott Abbott was born in London in 1838 and educated at the City of London School and St John’s College, Cambridge. His studies brought together classics, mathematics, and theology, interests that continued throughout his career. He was ordained in 1862 and became headmaster of the City of London School in 1865. He wrote educational works, studies of language, and books on religion. Flatland, published in 1884, imagines a society with only two spatial dimensions. Its story tests the limits of perception while satirizing social rank and intellectual complacency. Abbott retired from his headmastership in 1889 and continued writing. His work on Shakespeare’s grammar and his theological writings show the range of his scholarly interests. Readers should distinguish the arguments of his fictional narrators from his own beliefs, and neither his ordination nor his literary reputation makes every theological claim an authoritative statement of Christian doctrine. He died in 1926.

Edwin A. Abbott is also an author in the library: author page and works.