James Fitzmaurice-Kelly FBA (1858 – 30 November 1923) was a British writer on Spanish literature.
Born in Glasgow, He was the son of Colonel Thomas Kelly of the 40th Regiment of Foot and was educated at St Charles's College, Kensington, where he learned Spanish from a fellow pupil and taught himself to read Don Quixote. Obtaining work in 1885 as a tutor in Jerez de la Frontera to Buenaventura Misa y Busheroy, the son of the I Count of Bayona, later the Marquis of Misa.
In Madrid he started the first version of his biography on Miguel de Cervantes. Around 1886, he met Ambassador Juan Valera, politician and war journalist Gaspar Núñez de Arce, and other important poets and intellectuals. He wrote on Hispanic Culture subjects for The Spectator, Athenæum and Pall Mall Gazette. Returning to England, he established his reputation on Spanish literature through his reviews and articles for London periodicals. His History of Spanish Literature was published in 1898 and confirmed his reputation.
In 1898 he published his Historia de la literatura española in the Collection of Literatures of the World under Edmund Gosse. He was a Taylor Lecturer at Oxford University from 1902 and was invited to the United States in 1907 to deliver speeches at the Hispanic Society of America and several American Universities such as Harvard University and Yale University. From 1909 to 1916 he was a professor at the University of Liverpool and taught a special course at Cambridge University in 1916. He was a Cervantes Catedra Professor at London University till his retirement in 1920. Elected in 1906 a Fellow of the British Academy, he was miembro correspondiente of the Real Academia Española, the Real Academia de la Historia, and the Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona, as well as a Knight Commander of the Order of Alfonso XII.[1] In 1916 Fitzmaurice-Kelly gave the inaugural Master-Mind Lecture, on Cervantes and Shakespeare.[2]
He contributed on Spanish literature to the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, to the Cambridge Modern History, to Homenaje a Menendez y Pelayo, etc.
He edited and/or introduced:
He wrote:
He died at his house in Sydenham, Kent, on 30 November 1923 and was cremated and interred at West Norwood Cemetery on 4 December.