Queer Places:
King Edward's School, Edgbaston Park Rd, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2UA, United Kingdom
University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 3PA
Cimitero Acattolico, Capri, Città Metropolitana di Napoli, Campania, Italy
Richard Williams Reynolds (February 4, 1867 - December 22, 1947) was born in Liverpool, England, on February 4, 1867, the illegitimate son of
Brigadier-General Daniel Harris Reynolds of Arkansas and a widowed British settler named Annie Franklin. He was educated at King Edward's School in
Birmingham and Balliol College, Oxford, after which he spent the 1890s in London training for the Bar and doing journalism. During this time, his
membership in the Fabian Society led to a close friendship with the writer Edith Nesbit. In 1900, he joined the
staff of King Edward's School, where his most famous pupil was J. R. R. Tolkien.
In 1910, Reynolds married the novelist Dorothea Deakin, who was Edith Nesbit's niece, and the couple had three daughters named Hermione, Pamela, and
Diana. After retiring from King Edward's School in 1922, he moved with his family to Capri, Italy, where they associated with writers, artists, and
figures such as Axel Munthe. Following Dorothea's death in 1924, Reynolds experienced a series of severe personal tragedies between 1935 and 1936 on a
Greek-tragic scale. These included the deaths of his daughters Diana and Pamela—the latter being a promising poet who perished after falling into a
ravine or down a cliff in Anacapri—as well as the death of his second wife, Edith (the widow of William Page Andrews), whom he had recently married and
who suffered a fatal heart attack in 1936. Edith was buried in the Protestant Cemetery near her first husband, while Reynolds himself died in Capri on
December 22, 1947, and was buried there. Over the course of his life, Reynolds was also known as a friend to various writers, including
Oscar Wilde and D.H. Lawrence.
References:
- In and out of Bloomsbury: Biographical essays on twentieth-century writers and artists by Martin Ferguson Smith (Manchester University Press, published online February 20, 2026).
- Specifically Chapter 10: "The secret love-child of an American Civil War commander: The strange story of Tolkien's schoolteacher" (pages 238–271), which provides the first detailed historical study and biographical account of Richard Williams Reynolds (1867–1947), his parentage, his time at King Edward's School and Balliol College, his association with the Fabian Society, and his later life in Capri.
- Civil registration, birth, marriage, and death records (documenting his birth on February 4, 1867, in Liverpool, England, and his death on December 22, 1947, in Capri, Italy).
- Historical census records, passenger lists, and marriage certificates detailing his unions to Dorothea Deakin and subsequently to Edith (widow of William Page Andrews), as well as records concerning his daughters (Hermione, Pamela, and Diana).
- Cemetery and burial records from the Protestant Cemetery in Capri, Italy.
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