Sir Edwin Arnold was an English poet and journalist. He was born in Gravesend, Kent, and educated in Rochester and Oxford before becoming a schoolmaster in Birmingham. In 1856 he went to India as Principal of the Government Sanskrit College at Poona. He returned to England in 1861 and worked as a journalist for the Daily Telegraph. He was best known as a poet and specifically for interpreting Eastern philosophy and life in English verse. His chief work with this object is "The Light of Asia", or "The Great Renunciation", a poem of eight books in blank verse.