[1] He studied at Merchant Taylors' School[2] and at Brasenose College, Oxford, at which he became a Fellow in 1869 and a tutor in 1870.
Additionally, he edited a four-volume anthology, The English Poets (1880); Men of the Reign (1885); The Reign of Queen Victoria (1887); English Art in the Public Galleries of London (1888); and Men of the Time, which ran to 12 editions.
He wrote alone Humphry Sandwith, a Memoir (1884), and jointly The Oxford Spectator (1868) and Romney (1904).
Elected a member of the Athenaeum Club, London in 1885, he also completed the centenary history of the club, a work started by Henry Richard Tedder before his death, and published in 1926, the year he himself died.
They lived at 17 Bradmore Road in North Oxford, which Ward leased in 1872.