[6] His father was a furrier originally from a Yorkshire family that, for three generations, had been supporters of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England, and an author of a metrical translation of the Old Testament Psalms.

He began his studies in 1836, and was quickly recognised as one of the leading Oxford dons of his generation, made a Fellow while still an undergraduate in 1838; he graduated with first-class honours in 1839.

This was at the height of the Oxford Tractarian movement: through the friendship of W. G. Ward, he was drawn for a time in the direction of High Anglicanism; but a stronger and more lasting influence was that of the Arnold school, represented by A. P. Stanley.

Jowett's didactic and pedagogic nature tended him towards instruction of her complicated character accusing her of exaggeration, an emotional intensity occasioned by hysteria.

After the Second Royal Commission in May 1859 he called Nightingale "the Governess of Governors of India" for her robust dealings with the poor conditions in Calcutta "the natives themselves ... educated to cleanliness & health by the enforcement of sanitary regulations in the large towns.

A. Sorabji, an Indian writer, was a student barrister at Somerville College in 1890s, when the master of Balliol, pointing to the picture declared her love for him: the story was never confirmed.

This work, described by one of his friends as "a miracle of boldness", is full of originality and suggestiveness, but its publication awakened against him a storm of theological opposition from the Orthodox Evangelicals, which followed him more or less through life.

This persecution was continued until 1865, when E. A. Freeman and Charles Elton discovered by historical research that a breach of the conditions of the professorship had occurred, and Christ Church, Oxford, raised the endowment from £40 a year to £500.

Her radical thoughts on women's place in the home, and his departure from liberal Anglican theology helped to block for a decade his career advancement to the mastership of Balliol.

While the work gained fulsome praise from philosopher-politician John Stuart Mill, it profoundly shook the more traditional establishment's fervent belief that the working-classes would continue to worship in parish churches.

One historian has identified his relations with her as being most intense between 1863 and 1866: in April 1864, he had advised Florence Nightingale to prevent Garibaldi, her world-famous guest, from stirring up trouble in Italy.

This coincided with a big philosophical argument in which they were poles apart: there were three major pieces of sanitary legislation, the Contagious Diseases Acts, which in 1870 came under fire from Josephine Butler, a feminist and social reformer, who wished their repeal.

Policing of the health conditions became a case for which women's rights campaigners demanded repeal, and they launched a vociferous attack in the press on Jowett, amongst others.

[16] In the midst of other labours, Jowett had been quietly exerting his influence so as to conciliate all shades of liberal opinion, and bring them to bear upon the abolition of the theological test, which was still required for the M.A.

In connection with the Greek professorship, Jowett had undertaken a work on Plato which grew into a complete translation of the Dialogues with introductory essays, for which Florence Nightingale's criticism was gratefully received.

The university pulpit, indeed, was closed to him, but several congregations in London delighted in his sermons, and from 1866 until the year of his death he preached annually in Westminster Abbey, where Stanley had become Dean in 1863.

Amongst his pupils at Balliol were men destined to high positions in the state, whose parents had thus shown their confidence in the supposed heretic, and gratitude on this account was added to other motives for his unsparing efforts in tuition.

While scholars criticized particular renderings (and there were many small errors to be removed in subsequent editions), it was generally agreed that he had succeeded in making Plato an English classic.

The pulpit of St Mary's, the university church, was no longer closed to him, but the success of Balliol in the schools gave rise to jealousy in other colleges, and old prejudices did not suddenly give way; while a new movement in favour of "the endowment of research" ran counter to his immediate purposes.

He continued the practice, which he had commenced in 1848, of taking with him a small party of undergraduates in vacation time, and working with them in one of his favourite haunts, at Askrigg in Wensleydale, or Tummel Bridget or later at West Malvern.

The book on Morals might, however, have been written but for the heavy burden of the vice-chancellorship, which he was induced to accept in 1882,[20] by the hope, only partially fulfilled, of securing many improvements for Oxford University.

The Vice-Chancellor was ex officio a delegate of the Oxford University Press, where he hoped to effect much; and a plan for draining the Thames Valley, which he had now the power of initiating, was one on which his mind had dwelt for many years.

However, one plan that certainly came to fruition to great applause was the co-operation with Florence Nightingale to bring a lecture tour to Oxford for undergraduates training in the agricultural sciences for the Indian Civil Service.

Theologian, tutor, university reformer, renowned master of an Oxford college, Jowett's best claim to the remembrance of succeeding generations was his greatness as a moral teacher.