Andrew Cecil Bradley (1851–1935) was an English literary scholar.

He was educated at Cheltenham College, studied at Balliol College, Oxford under the British idealist philosopher T. H. Green. He was the younger brother of the major figure of British idealism, philosopher F. H. Bradley. He was Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1901 to 1906; his Oxford Lectures on Poetry were published in 1909.

He published Shakespearean Tragedy in 1904. It was immediately hailed as a brilliant achievement. Though Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people, his book is probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published. It has been reprinted more than two dozen times and is itself the subject of a scholarly book, Katherine Cooke's A. C. Bradley and His Influence in Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Criticism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).

However, more recently his work has been greatly discredited by many, often said to make anachronistic errors and attempt to apply late 19th century conceptions of morality to early 17th century society. Since the 1980's, the importance of postructuralist methods of criticism has resulted in students turning away from his work.

His other works were: Poetry for Poetry's Sake (1901), A Commentary on Tennyson's In Memoriam (1901), and A Miscellany (1929).

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1851 births | 1935 deaths | English literary critics | Old Cheltonians