Tom Arnold (literary scholar)

After gaining a first class degree at University College, Oxford, Arnold grew discontented with Victorian Britain and attempted to take up farming in New Zealand.

Failing to make a success of this career, in 1850 he moved to Tasmania, having been invited to take the job of Inspector of Schools by Governor William Denison.

While in Tasmania, Arnold converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, a move which angered his Protestant wife sufficiently to cause her to smash the windows of the chapel during his confirmation.

Finding that some supporters were campaigning for him as the "Anglican" candidate, he felt this put him in a false position; on the eve of the election he announced his intention of being reconciled to the Catholic Church.

After a period of financial hardship, in which his main occupation was editorial work for the Rolls Series, Arnold returned to Dublin in 1882 as professor of English literature at University College, teaching to the end of his life in 1900.