1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Delius, Nikolaus

DELIUS, NIKOLAUS (1813–1888), German philologist and Shakespearean scholar, was born at Bremen on the 19th of September 1813. He was educated at Bonn and Berlin, and took the degree of doctor in philosophy in 1838. After travelling for some time in England, France and Germany, he returned to Bonn in 1846, where in 1855 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit, Provençal and English literature, a post he held until his death, which took place at Bonn on the 18th of November 1888. His greatest literary achievement was his scholarly edition of Shakespeare (1854–1861). He also edited Wace’s St Nicholas (1850), a volume of Provençal songs (1853), and published a Shakspere-Lexikon (1852). His original works include: Über das englische Theaterwesen zu Shaksperes Zeit (1853), Gedichte (1853), Der sardinische Dialekt des dreizehnten Jahrhunderts (1868), and Abhandlungen zu Shakspere (two series, 1878 and 1888). As a critic of Shakespeare’s text he stands in the first rank.

See the biographical notice by J. Schipper in Englische Studien, vol. 14.