Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson born 6 August 1862 (d. 1932)Goldworthy Lowes Dickinson was an English historian and political activist. He led most of his life at Cambridge, where he did a dissertation on neo-platonism before becoming a fellow. He was closely tied with the Bloomsbury Group.
A noted pacifist, Dickinson protested Britain's involvement in World War I. His essay on the Covenant from the Treaty of Versailles (The Future of the Covenant, London: League of Nations Union, 1920) helped shape public opinion towards the League of Nations.
Born in London, his parents were artists and early Christian socialists. Educated at Charterhouse School and King's College, Cambridge, he graduated in 1884, as an outstanding scholar. That same year, he was also inducted into the Cambridge Conversazione Society, the Apostles or fratres, a club that once included Alfred Lord Tennyson and Arthur Hallam and that became the progenitor of the Bloomsbury group.
Dickinson studied medicine but never practiced. Instead, he wrote mostly indifferent poetry and pursued humanitarian projects, such as working on a cooperative farm and, like his friend Edward Carpenter, supporting the university extension programme through lecturing. He also met with many members of the socialist Fabian Society and immersed himself in classical and modern civilisation, avidly reading Plato, Shelley, and Goethe.In 1887, he was named fellow of his old college (based on a thesis on the neo-Platonist Plotinus), which provided a more stable professional environment. In 1892, however, his fellowship was not renewed. He then became a librarian, but was appointed college lecturer in political science in 1896. In 1920, he was given a pension fellowship, tenable for life. He worked also as a lecturer at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In 1900, Dickinson made a visit to Greece, followed by lecture tours in the United States, and finally trips to India, China, and Japan, where he soon realised the ills of Western imperialism and colonialism. He experienced a mystical heightening of consciousness and began to form a new concept of civilisation, shaped by Occidental humanism, Oriental philosophy, mystical religion, and classical wisdom.
When World War I broke out, Dickinson was deeply shocked. He founded the pacifist Bryce Group, became president of the Union of Democratic Control, joined Bertrand Russell in his stance against the war, advocated the establishment of the League of Nations (a phrase he possibly coined), and was instrumental in its conception. He hoped that his work on behalf of the League would help end future warfare.
He wrote an enormous number of books, most of which are now out of print and remain primarily of interest to specialists of the League of Nations and students of the influence of Platonism and Cambridge idealism. But the sheer number shows Dickinson's contribution to the society of his day and the unusually broad range of his interests and learning. The tomes range widely across cultures, histories, civilisations, denominations, philosophies, music, and more.
His most significant work from a gay perspective was the immensely popular The Greek Way of Life (1896), in which he delicately broaches homoeroticism and expounds his scholarship on Plato and his idealisation of male friendship.
After a prostate operation in 1932, Dickinson appeared to be recovering, but died on August 3. Memorial services were held in King's College Chapel, and in London.
E M Forster, by then a good friend who had been influenced by Dickinson's books, became his literary executor. Dickinson's sisters then asked Forster to write the dead man's biography, which was published as Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson in 1934. Forster has been criticised for refraining from publishing details of Dickinson's sexual proclivities - but that may have said as much about Forster as Dickinson.