James Bryce

(1838 - 1922)

As a student at Oxford, James Bryce wrote a prizewinning essay that was published in book form as The Holy Roman Empire. Beginning in 1870, he served as professor of civil law at Oxford, where, in 1885, along with Lord Acton, he founded the English Historical Review. He later served as a Liberal member of the House of Commons, and, in 1888, became well known for his popular multivolume study of U.S. politics, The American Commonwealth. Bryce was appointed ambassador to Washington, DC, in 1907; was created a viscount in 1914; and died in 1922.