Edmund Curtis[1] (1881–1943), was born in Lancashire to Irish parents.
His education was paid for through donations when it was heard that poems he had published when he was 14 and later in London in June 1896 were from a factory worker.
In 1900 he won a history scholarship to Keble College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1904.
He applied for the then vacant Erasmus Smith's Chair of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin and was appointed in 1914.
After, from 1939, he held the Lecky Chair of History (also at Trinity) for the 4 years prior to his death in 1943.