Bassano Ltd · Public domain

Edited the Dictionary of National Biography from 1891, succeeding Leslie Stephen, and personally wrote more than 800 of its entries, mostly on Elizabethan authors and statesmen. His 1897 entry on Shakespeare grew into a standalone Life of William Shakespeare (1898) that went through five editions, and he went on to edit a facsimile of Shakespeare's First Folio. He was knighted in 1911 and also wrote biographies of Queen Victoria and Edward VII.