Edwin Guest

{{short description|19th-century British antiquarian}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

File:Edwin Guest by John Watson Gordon.jpg]]

Edwin Guest FRS (10 September 1800{{snd}}23 November 1880) was an English antiquary.

He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated as eleventh wrangler, subsequently becoming a fellow of his college.{{acad|id=GST819E|name=Guest, Edwin}} Called to the bar in 1828, he devoted himself, after some years of legal practice, to antiquarian and literary research.{{EB1911|inline=y|wstitle=Guest, Edwin|volume=12|page=673}}

In 1838 he published his exhaustive 2-volume History of English Rhythms.{{cite book|author=Guest, Edwin|title=A History of English Rhythms|location=London|publisher=W. Pickering|year=1838|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000200097}} He also wrote a very large number of papers on Roman-British history, which, together with a mass of fresh material for a history of early Britain, were published posthumously under the editorship of Dr Stubbs under the title Origines Celticae (1883). Guest was an instrumental figure in founding the second incarnation of the Philological Society of London in 1842.(Madison) Fiona Carolyn Marshall. ‘Edwin Guest: Philologist, Historian, and Founder of the Philological Society of London’. Language & History (July 2016); formerly Bulletin of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas 42, no. 1 (2004): 11–30, https://doi.org/10.1080/02674971.2004.11745588 In 1852 Guest was elected master of Caius College, becoming LL.D. in the following year, and in 1854-1855 he was vice-chancellor of Cambridge University. Guest was a fellow of the Royal Society, and an honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries of London.