Editing Robert Bridges (section)

==Personal and professional life==
Bridges was born at [[Walmer]], [[Kent]], in [[England]], the son of John Thomas Bridges (died 1853) and his wife Harriett Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. [[Affleck baronets|Sir Robert Affleck, 4th Baronet]]. He was the fourth son and eighth child. After his father's death his mother married again, in 1854, to [[John Edward Nassau Molesworth]], vicar of [[Rochdale]], and the family moved there.<ref name=orb>{{cite ODNB|id=32066|first=Catherine|last=Phillips|title=Bridges, Robert Seymour}}</ref>

Bridges was educated at [[Eton College]] and [[Corpus Christi College, Oxford]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.englishverse.com/poets/bridges_robert |title=Bridges, Robert|website =EnglishVerse.com|date=2021|access-date=2023-11-13}}</ref> He went on to study medicine in London at [[St Bartholomew's Hospital]], intending to practise until the age of forty and then retire to write poetry. He practised as a casualty physician at his teaching hospital (where he made a series of highly critical remarks about the Victorian medical establishment) and subsequently as a full physician to the Great Northern Central Hospital (1876–85)<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Jewesbury |first=Eric |title=The Royal Northern Hospital 1856-1956 |publisher=[[H. K. Lewis & Co. Ltd.]] |year=1956 |location=London |pages=II, 142}}</ref>(later the [[Royal Northern Hospital]]). He was also a physician to the Hospital for Sick Children.

Lung disease forced Bridges to retire from his post as physician in 1885,<ref name=":0" /> and from that point on he devoted himself to writing and literary research. However, Bridges's literary work started long before his retirement, his first collection of poems having been published in 1873. In 1884 he married [[Monica Bridges|Mary Monica Waterhouse]],<ref name=orb/> daughter of the architect [[Alfred Waterhouse]] [[Royal Academy|R.A.]], and spent the rest of his life in rural seclusion, first at the Manor House [[Yattendon]] in Berkshire, then (from 1905) on the [[Boars Hill]] ridge above Oxford, where he died.<ref name=orb/>

He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1900. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1913, the only medical graduate to have held the office.

He was the father of poet [[Elizabeth Daryush]] and of the cabinet secretary [[Edward Bridges, 1st Baron Bridges|Edward Bridges]].
[[File:Memorial to Robert Bridges and Edward Bridges, 1st Baron Bridges, in St Nicholas-at-Wade.jpg|thumb|Memorial to Robert Bridges and Edward Bridges, 1st Baron Bridges, in [[St Nicholas-at-Wade]], Kent]]