[1] Born at 17 Euston Square, London, he was the son of Frederick Harrison (1799–1881),[2] a stockbroker and his wife Jane, daughter of Alexander Brice, a Belfast granite merchant.

He was baptised at St. Pancras Church, Euston, and spent his early childhood at the northern London suburb of Muswell Hill, to which the family moved soon after his birth.

[1] His father later acquired a lease on the grand Tudor manor house Sutton Place near Guildford, Surrey, in 1874,[3] which descended to his elder son Sidney, and about which Frederic jnr.

Among his contemporaries at Wadham were Edward Spencer Beesly, John Henry Bridges, and George Earlam Thorley who were to become the leaders of the secular Religion of Humanity or "Comtism" in England.

[1][4] He became part of a liberal group of academics at Oxford that also included Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Goldwin Smith, Mark Pattison and Benjamin Jowett.

[8] An advanced and vehement Radical in politics and Progressive in municipal affairs, Harrison in 1886 stood unsuccessfully as the Liberal Party candidate against Sir John Lubbock for the University of London parliamentary constituency.

[7] Harrison was a regular contributor to George Potter's trade unionist journal The Beehive, and to W. H. Riley's Commonwealth, which promoted the International Working Men's Association.

'[9] Later works include Autobiographic Memoirs (1911); The Positive Evolution of Religion (1912); The German Peril (1915); On Society (1918); Jurisprudence and Conflict of Nations (1919); Obiter Dicta (1919); Novissima Verba (1920).