Humphrey Sumner Milford was an English publisher and editor who from 1913 to 1945 was Publisher to the University of Oxford

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...

 and head of the London operations of Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press

Oxford University Press is the largest university press in the world. It is a department of the University of Oxford and is governed by a group of 15 academics appointed by the Vice-Chancellor known as the Delegates of the Press. They are headed by the Secretary to the Delegates, who serves as...

 (OUP). In this work, he made OUP a major world-wide publisher of noteworthy books, music, and educational material for the general public, complementing the scholarly work of the Clarendon Press in Oxford. Milford himself edited volumes of works of Robert Browning

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets.-Early years:...

, William Cowper

William Cowper

William Cowper was an English poet and hymnodist. One of the most popular poets of his time, Cowper changed the direction of 18th century nature poetry by writing of everyday life and scenes of the English countryside. In many ways, he was one of the forerunners of Romantic poetry...

, and Leigh Hunt

Leigh Hunt

James Henry Leigh Hunt , best known as Leigh Hunt, was an English critic, essayist, poet and writer.-Early life:Leigh Hunt was born at Southgate, London, where his parents had settled after leaving the USA...

; and was principal editor of The Oxford Book of Regency Verse (later The Oxford Book of Romantic Verse) and a moving force behind the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Upon publication of the final volume of the Oxford English Dictionary

Oxford English Dictionary

The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...

in 1928, he was among those awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University. He was knighted in 1936. His elder son by his first marriage was the composer Robin Milford

Robin Milford

Robin Milford was an English composer.- Biography :Milford was born in Oxford, son of Sir Humphrey Milford, publisher with Oxford University Press. He attended Rugby School from 1916 where his musical talent for the piano, flute and theory was recognised, and studied at the Royal College of Music...

 (1903–1959); his younger son was the racket and hockey player David Milford (1905–1984). His sister Violet Alice Milford was the mother of the poet and scholar Anne Ridler

Anne Ridler

Anne Barbara Ridler OBE was a British poet, and Faber and Faber editor, selecting the Faber A Little Book of Modern Verse with T. S. Eliot . Her Collected Poems were published in 1994...

 (1912–2001). In summing up his work, The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

of London cited his “unfailing catholicity”, “nose for a good book”, and “rare sense of the practicable”.

Sources

• Chatterjee, Rimi B. Empires of the Mind: A History of the Oxford University Press in India under the Raj. New Delhi: OUP (ISBN 978-0-19-567474-3), 2006.
• Maw, Martin. "Milford, Sir Humphrey Sumner". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Volume 38. Oxford: OUP (ISBN 0-19-861388-1), 2004.
• Norrington, A. L. P. “Milford, Sir Humphrey Sumner”. Dictionary of National Biography. Seventh Supplement. London: OUP, 1971.
• "Sir Humphrey Milford" [Obituary]. The Times [London]. No. 52,411 (September 8, 1952), p. 6.
• Sutcliffe, Peter. The Oxford University Press: An Informal History. Oxford: Clarendon Press (ISBN 0-19-951084-1), 1978.