university professor writer barrister
Doyle was born near Tadcaster, Yorkshire, to a military family which produced several distinguished officers, including his father, Major-General Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, 1st Baronet, who was created a baronet in 1828. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father in 1839.
He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.
Studying law, he was called to the Bar in 1837, and afterwards held various high fiscal appointments, becoming in 1869, Commissioner of Customs. In 1834 he published Miscellaneous Verses, followed by Two Destinies (1844), Oedipus, King of Thebes (1849), and Return of the Guards (1866). He was elected in 1867 Professor of Poetry at Oxford.
Doyle"s best work is his ballads, which include The Red Thread of Honour, The Private of the Buffs, and The Loss of the Birkenhead.
In his longer poems his genuine poetical feeling was not equalled by his power of expression, and much of his poetry is commonplace. Doyle"s daughter Mary married Charles Carmichael Lacaita, Member of Parliament and botanist.
