Basil Willey was a professor of English literature at Cambridge University and a prolific author of well-written and scholarly works on English literature

English literature

English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....

 and intellectual history

Intellectual history

Note: this article concerns the discipline of intellectual history, and not its object, the whole span of human thought since the invention of writing. For clarifications about the latter topic, please consult the writings of the intellectual historians listed here and entries on individual...

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He was born in London, England in 1897 and educated at Cambridge University. He became a fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge

Pembroke College, Cambridge

Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...

 in 1935. He was appointed King Edward VII Professor of English Literature in 1946. He served as President of Pembroke College from 1958 to 1964. He retired from his position as King Edward VII Professor of English Literature in 1965.

He was a fellow of the British Academy

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

 and the Royal Society of Literature

Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

, and a member of the Athenaeum Club

Athenaeum Club, London

The Athenaeum Club, usually just referred to as the Athenaeum, is a notable London club with its Clubhouse located at 107 Pall Mall, London, England, at the corner of Waterloo Place....

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Published works

• Tendencies in Renaissance Literary Theory (1922)
• The Seventeenth Century Background (Studies in the Thought of the Age in Relation to Poetry and Religion - 1934)
• The Eighteenth Century Background: (Studies on the Idea of Nature in the Thought of the Period - 1940)
• Nineteenth Century Studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold (1949)
• Christianity Past and Present (1952)
• More nineteenth century studies: A group of honest doubters (1956)
• The Religion of Nature (1957)
• Darwin and Butler: Two Versions of Evolution: The Hibbert Lectures of 1959 (1960)
• The English Moralists" (1964)
• Cambridge and other Memories, 1920-1953 (1968 - Published by Chatto and Wndus London
  London
  London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
  
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• Religion to-day (1969)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1973)

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Additional Bibliography

• The English Mind: Studies in the English Moralists Presented to Basil Willey by Hugh Sykes Davies and George Watson (1964)
• Spots of Time: A Retrospect of the Years 1897-1920 (First volume of autobiography)