Lewis Sergeant

Life

The son of John Sergeant, a schoolmaster at Cheltenham School, and his wife Mary Anne, daughter of George Lewis, he was born at Barrow-on-Humber, Lincolnshire, on 10 November 1841. Adeline Sergeant was his first cousin, the daughter of Richard Sergeant, his father's brother.

After education under a private tutor, Sergeant matriculated at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, in 1861, graduating B.A. with mathematical honours in 1865. At the Cambridge Union he showed himself a Liberal and supporter of W. E. Gladstone. On leaving college, he spent a period as assistant master under Henry Hayman at Cheltenham grammar school.

Lewis then moved into to journalism, becoming editor, in succession, of An anti-Game Law Journal, of The Examiner, and the Hereford Times. He then had a long period with The Athenæum and with the London Daily Chronicle as leader writer. He was also a recognised authority on education, was elected to the council of the College of Preceptors, and edited the Educational Times from 1895 to 1902.

A Hellenophile, from 1878 Sergeant acted as secretary of the Greek committee in London. George I of Greece bestowed on him the Order of the Redeemer in October 1878.

Sergeant died at Bournemouth on 3 February 1902.

Works

Sergeant's historical writings cover a wide range, and included:

Sergeant published New Greece (1878, republished 1879), and Greece in 1880. There followed Greece in the Nineteenth Century: a Record of Hellenic Emancipation and Progress, 1821–1897, with illustrations, in 1897. He also wrote a volume of verse; a novel, The Caprice of Julia (1898); and other fiction pseudonymously.

Family

Sergeant married on 12 April 1871 Emma Louisa, daughter of James Robertson of Cheltenham. Philip Walsingham Sergeant, the author, was one of their children.