Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett (c. 1855 – 1927[1]) was an Irish-New Zealand lawyer and scholar who was a pioneer in the field of comparative literature.
[4] From 1885 until 1890 Posnett held the Chair of Classics and English Literature at the University of Auckland although he also examined students in economics.
[6] Informed by Herbert Spencer and Social Darwinism and published as part of the "International Scientific Series" (published by Kegan Paul, London and D. Appleton, New York), it explained the history of literature as occurring contemporaneously with social evolution, from simple and communal to individual and complex.
Posnett's work was also much influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature").
Apart from Matthew Arnold's use of the phrase "comparative literature" in a letter, Posnett was the first scholar to use it in the English-speaking world.