WYNDHAM, GEORGE (1863-1913), British politician and man of letters, was born Aug. 29, 1863, the eldest son of Percy Scawen Wyndham, and grandson of the first Lord Lecon field. His mother was Madeline Caroline Frances Eden, daughter of Sir Guy Campbell, bart., and through her he was great-grandson of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Irish rebel. He was educated at Eton and Sandhurst, obtained a commission in the Coldstream Guards in 1883, and served through the Suakin campaign of 1885. He left the army in 1887, married Sibell Mary, daughter of the 9th Earl of Scarborough, widow of Earl Grosvenor. He became private secretary to A. J. Balfour, at the time Irish Secretary, and in 1889 entered Parliament as Conservative mem ber for Dover, a seat which he retained till his death.
After serving, from 1898-190o, as financial secretary to the war office, he was appointed in 190o chief secretary for Ireland. His early work in Ireland met with general approval. He devel oped enormously the Conservative policy of land purchase; and the act which he carried in 1903 for that end was the most com prehensive measure of the kind ever submitted to Parliament. He hoped to arrange a form of local government which should sufficiently meet Nationalist demands, and with this in view ap pointed in 1902 an eminent Anglo-Indian, Sir Antony (afterwards Lord) MacDonnell to the under-secretaryship. The Unionist
party, both in Ireland and in England, became suspicious of the tendencies of his administration, and he was driven in 1905 to resignation. He never held office again, but was active in support of tariff reform and woman suffrage; he was a keen critic of Haldane's army reforms, and threw himself vigorously into the "Diehard" campaign against the Parliament Bill in 1911.
He was also a man of letters. Here his genius was stimulated by his friendship for W. E. Henley, who dedicated a book to "George Wyndham, soldier, courtier, scholar." His principal pub lished work was an edition of Shakespeare's Poems (1898); but he wrote also on North's Plutarch and Ronsarcl. The Admirable Crichton of his day, handsome and debonair, he was keen alike on field sports and the arts, a working railway director and an efficient colonel of yeomanry, the pet of society and the recipient of honorary distinctions from several universities. On June 8, 1913, at the comparatively early age of 5o, he died in Paris.
See his Life and Letters, ed. J. W. Mackail and Guy Wyndham (2 vols., 1925) .