Walter Pater

Plato and Platonism originated in a series of lectures that Pater gave to undergraduates in Oxford, where he was a Fellow of Brasenose College, teaching Classics and the History of Philosophy, from 1864 until his death. Early on, he gained the faintly scandalous reputation at Oxford of being an “infidel” in religious matters; and by the time that he collected some of his essays in his first book-Studies in the History of the Renaissance-in 1873, he had become moderately well known for his writings and opinions in both Oxford and London.