DIXON, RICHARD WATSON English poet and divine, son of Dr. James Dixon, a Wesleyan minister, was born on May 5, 1833. He was educated at King Edward's school, Birmingham, and on proceeding to Pembroke college, Oxford, became one of the famous "Birmingham group" there who shared with William Morris and Burne-Jones in the pre-Raphaelite move ment. He became minor canon and honorary librarian of Car lisle in 1868, and honorary canon in 1874; he was proctor in convocation (189o-94), and received the honorary degree of D.D. from Oxford in 1899. He died at Warkworth, of which parish he was vicar, on Jan. 23, 1900. His principal work is History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction (1878-1902). At the time of his death he had completed six volumes, covering the period 1529 to 1570, two of which were published posthumously.
Dixon's Selected Poems were published in 1909 with a memoir of the author by Robert Bridges.