1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Head, Sir Edmund Walker

HEAD, SIR EDMUND WALKER, Bart. (1805–1868), English colonial governor and writer on art, was the son of the Rev. Sir John Head, Bart., rector of Rayleigh, Essex. He was educated at Winchester school and Oriel College, Oxford, and taking his degree with first-class honours in classics, he became fellow of Merton College. On his father’s death in 1838, he succeeded to the baronetcy as 8th baronet. His services as poor-law commissioner, to which post he was appointed in 1841 after five years as assistant-commissioner, procured for him in 1847 the office of lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, whence he passed in 1854 to the governor-generalship of Canada, which he retained till 1861. The following year, having returned to England, Head was nominated a civil service commissioner. In 1857 he was sworn of the Privy Council, and in 1860 was decorated as K.C.B., while in the course of his career he received the degrees of D.C.L. at Oxford and LL.D. at Cambridge. He died in London on the 28th of January 1868, the baronetcy becoming extinct, as his only son had died in 1859.

Sir Edmund Head wrote the article “Painting” in the Penny Cyclopaedia; A Handbook of the Spanish and French Schools of Painting (1845); Shall and Will, or two Chapters on Future Auxiliary Verbs (1856); and Ballads and other Poems, Original and Translated (1868). He also edited F. T. Kugler’s Handbook of Painting of the German, Flemish, Dutch, Spanish, and French Schools (1854) and the Essays on the Administrations of Great Britain (1864), written by his lifelong friend, Sir George Cornewall Lewis. His translation from the Icelandic of Viga Glum’s Saga appeared in 1866.