Education
Chambers was educated at University College. He was Librarian at that institution from 1901 to 1922, and Assistant Professor in the English Department, 1904-1914.
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Raymond Chambers
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Career
He served in World War I, with the Red Cross in France, and in Belgium with the Young Men’s Christian Association/B.E.F. Chambers became Quain Professor of English at University College London in 1922. Chambers wrote on a wide variety of subjects relating to English literature, history, and culture. Notably, he worked on the Shakespearean additions to the play Sir Thomas More, with Alfred West. Pollard and other scholars.
Thomas Shippey described Chambers as "a patron and supporter of Tolkien in his early years."
John Garth writes that the title of The Book of Lost Tales "recalls R.W. Chambers’ reference "to the lost Tale of Wade,"" in a chapter of his study of the Old English poem Widsith that focuses on the old sea-legends of the ancient Germanic tribes of the north-western European coastlands (and which also deals with Éarendel).
Chambers criticized the Romans for disdaining the Germanic peoples and failing to record their songs and tales, and laments the fact that, despite King Alfred’s love for the old lays, the Anglo Saxons wrote too few of them down: "‘So this world of high-spirited, chivalrous song has passed away,’ says Chambers. ‘lieutenant is our duty then to gather up reverently such fragments of the old Teutonic epic as fortune has preserved in our English tongue and to learn from them all we can of that collection of stories of which these fragments are the earliest vernacular record.’" This passage suggests that Chambers" work had inspired the broad outlines of Tolkien’s original project—the piecing together of a mythology for England.
Achievements
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Born
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Died
April 23, 1942 (aged 67)