Educated at Bloomsbury, Garnett joined the British Museum staff in 1851 as an assistant librarian. He continued to function in various capacities at the Museum, including Superintendent of the Reading Room, editor and Keeper of Printed Books, until his retirement in 1899. He undertook numerous translations during his career and produced a large amount of verse in addition to biographies, short stories and scholarly works. Today, he is probably best remembered for his book of short stories, Twilight of the Gods (1888), which drew on tales from pagan cultures. He was the father of the gifted critic and editor, Edward Garnett, and the equally brilliant translator, Constance Garnett, was his daughter-in-law. His other works include Relics of Shelley (1862), Poems From the German (1862), Life of Thomas Carlyle (1887), The Age of Dryden (1893), William Blake (1895), Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1898), History of Italian Literature (1898), Essays of an Ex-Librarian (1901), Queen and Other Poems (1901), English Literature (1903), Coleridge (1904), William Shakespeare (1905) and De Flagello Myrteo (1906). |
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