13 Facts About John Keble

John Keble was an English Anglican priest and poet who was one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement.

In 1806, Keble won a scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

John Keble excelled in his studies and in 1810 achieved double first-class honours in both Latin and mathematics.

John Keble was for some years a tutor and examiner at the University of Oxford.

John Keble dedicated his Praelectiones to and greatly admired Wordsworth, who once offered to go over The Christian Year with a view to correcting the English.

John Keble contributed seven pieces for Tracts for the Times, a series of short papers dealing with faith and practice.

In 1841 his neighbour Charlotte Mary Yonge, a resident at Otterbourne House in the adjacent village of Otterbourne, where John Keble was responsible for building a new church, compiled The Child's Christian Year: Hymns for every Sunday and Holy-Day to which John Keble contributed four poems, including Bethlehem, above all cities blest.

Lyra Innocentium was being composed while John Keble was stricken by what he always seems to have regarded as the great sorrow of his life, the decision of Newman to leave the Church of England for Catholicism.

John Keble was absolutely without ambition, with no care for the possession of power or influence, hating show and excitement, and distrustful of his own abilities.

The view from Bulverton Hill, Sidmouth, where John Keble was a frequent visitor, is thought to have inspired some of his best loved work.

Folklore suggests that his favourite spot was where a wooden bench known as John Keble's Seat has been in place for many years.

The 'Te Deum' window in the south-east transept of St Peter's Church, Bournemouth, was commissioned as a memorial to John Keble, who had preferred to sit in the transept when worshipping at St Peter's daily in the last months of his life.

John Keble's mind was, by long, patient and affectionate study of Scripture, so imbued with it that its language, its train of thought, its mode of reasoning, seems to flow out into his poetry, almost, one should think, unconsciously to himself.