Lord David Cecil was a literary historian and biographer who taught at Oxford University. Cecil, the grandson of nineteenth-century British Prime Minister Lord Salisbury and son of James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury, was born on April 9, 1902 in London. He attended Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford and later became a fellow of New College, Oxford. He was appointed as a professor of English literature at Oxford in 1948. While at Oxford, Cecil joined the informal literary society, the Inklings, with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. David Cecil died on January 1, 1986. He was survived by three children.