Editing William Empson (section)

== Background and education ==
Empson was the son of Arthur Reginald Empson of [[Yokefleet]] Hall, [[East Yorkshire]]. His mother was Laura, daughter of Richard Mickelthwait, JP, of Ardsley House, Yorkshire. He was a first cousin of the twins [[David Atcherley|David]] and [[Richard Atcherley]]. Empson first discovered his great skill and interest in mathematics at his preparatory school. He won an entrance scholarship to [[Winchester College]], where he excelled as a student and received what he later described as "a ripping education"  in spite of the rather rough and abusive milieu of the school: a longstanding tradition of physical force, especially among the students, figured prominently in life at such schools.

In 1925 Empson won a scholarship to [[Magdalene College, Cambridge]], where he read mathematics, gaining a [[British undergraduate degree classification|first]] for his [[Tripos|Part I]] but a disappointing upper-second for his Part II. He then went on to pursue a second degree in English, and at the end of the first year he was offered a Bye Fellowship. His supervisor in mathematics, [[Arthur Stanley Ramsey]], expressed regret at Empson's decision to pursue English rather than mathematics, since it was a discipline for which Empson showed great talent.

[[I. A. Richards]], the director of studies in English, recalled the genesis of Empson's first major work, ''[[Seven Types of Ambiguity]]'', composed when Empson was not yet 22 and published when he was 24:<ref>{{Cite book|title=20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader|last=Lodge|first=David|publisher=Longman|year=1972|isbn=0582484227|location=London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/20thcenturyliter00lodg/page/145 145–46]|via=Google Books|url=https://archive.org/details/20thcenturyliter00lodg/page/145}}</ref>

<blockquote>At about his third visit he brought up the games of interpretation which [[Laura Riding]] and [[Robert Graves]] had been playing [in ''A Survey of Modernist Poetry'', 1927] with the unpunctuated form of '[[Sonnet 129|The expense of spirit in a waste of shame]].' Taking the sonnet as a conjuror takes his hat, he produced an endless swarm of lively rabbits from it and ended by 'You could do that with any poetry, couldn't you?' This was a Godsend to a Director of Studies, so I said, 'You'd better go off and do it, hadn't you?'</blockquote>

But disaster struck when a servant found [[condoms]] among Empson's possessions and claimed to have caught him ''[[in flagrante delicto]]'' with a woman. As a result, not only did he have his scholarship revoked, but his name was struck from the college records, he lost his prospects of a fellowship and he was banished from the university.<ref>Haffenden, John: ''William Empson'', Vol. 1: ''Among the Mandarins'', Oxford University Press, 2005, 38% Kindle</ref>