Background
The son of a bank clerk, Alexander was educated at Street Paul"s School and Trinity College, Oxford, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1889 with a number of distinctions and prizes.
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Sidney Alexander
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Career
The poem was generally well received in the Oxford Magazine (“sustained melody and gracecertain higher touches of imagination and expression which give to the simple and quiet style an air of finish and distinction”). Alexander built on his academic success in verse by placing a number of poems in some of the leading Victorian periodicals, Academy, English Illustrated Magazine, Macmillan"s, Cassell"s and others Several of his poems were reprinted in America.
But Alexander’s career became that of a clergyman, distinguished to some extent by his religious essays and books but more by his efforts to safeguard the fabric of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, where he became a Canon in 1909 and where his responsibilities encompassed those of Treasurer.
Alexander had been ordained to a curacy at Saint Michael"s Church, Oxford and was a lecturer and tutor at Keble College, Oxford until his appointment in 1893 as Reader of the Temple, followed by appointments as Canon of Gloucester and head of the Gloucester College of Mission Clergy in March 1902. Most of his poetry, however, remained unpublished, but was carefully preserved in an undated manuscript notebook.
Alexander’s work, especially his fundraising, on behalf of Saint Paul’s was noteworthy. He agitated from early in his canonical career for the structural and financial needs of the cathedral, articulating and responding to environmental threats to the very fabric of the building, built on shallow foundations above treacherous sand ("We must have wet sand!" cried Canon Alexander fervently "We must have wet sand!").
His dedication to the central role of the cathedral in the faith of England is clear in his lectures and publications about Saint Paul’s, including The Safety of Saint Paul’s (1927), and about its architect, Christopher Wren.
Alexander’s strengthening and protecting the structure of the Cathedral helped it survive the German bombings of World World War II, as was recognized by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1944. Even before the war he had been awarded several honors. Alexander married in 1891 Lily Redfern, who died at their home, 2, Amen Court, on December 17, 1937.
