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Alfred Brotherston Emden was born in Ealing on 22 October 1888, the elder son of Alfred Charles Richard Emden (a barrister who was later a judge) and Elizabeth Cowley Whitfeld. His younger brother Cecil Stuart Emden was born in Ealing on 31 December 1889.

At the time of the 1901 census Alfred (12) and his younger brother Cecil were boarding in Bishops Down, Tunbridge Wells at the private school of Roger Burton at Hurstleigh. In 1903 he went on to King's School Canterbury.

In 1907 Alfred won a place as a Scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford.

Aldred Emden's father died on 18 February 1911 at the age of 61 at The Cresset, Avermore Road, Crowborough, Sussex, and his effects came to £1,156 9s. 4d. At the time of the census on 2 April that year, Alfred and his brother Cecil, both described as students, were home for the vacation at their home in Crowborough with their newly-widowed mother and their two servants. That summer he took his Finals, obtaining a Second Class in Modern History.

Emden passed in Roman Law at the Inner Temple in December 1911 and in Constitutional Law (English) & Colonial History in June 1912 (both Class III), but was never called to the Bar. From 1913 to 1915 he ran a hostel in Sydenham in south-east London for disadvantaged boys, and then for a short period was a schoolmaster at Strand School, Brixton. From 1915 he was an able seaman in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in the destroyer leader HMS Parker.

In 1919 Emden (while still an able seaman) accepted a tutorship in Modern History at St Edmund Hall and was immediately appointed Bursar. He was appointed Vice-Principal of that college in 1920, and the 1921 census shows him living there at age of 32. In January 1929 he was elected Principal of St Edmund Hall.

In 1927 he was a founder member of the Oxford Preservation Trust.

Dunstan Cottage was built in Old Headington in 1935 (Plan No. 6802 submitted to City Engineer on 25 June 1934), and Alfred Emden’s mother Elizabeth Cowley Emden moved into it immediately, presumably because she wished to live near her elder son.

Dunstan Cottage at 3 Dunstan Road in 2015. It has been considerably extended
and is three separate dwellings

The cottage's address was originally Cemetery Road, but In about 1939 Emden was instrumental in getting the road's name changed. The 1939 Register shows his mother living here alone at Dunstan Cottage in the the newly renamed Dunstan Road while he himself was in the Principal's Lodgings at St Edmund Hall.

During the Second World War Emden continued as Principal of St Edmund Hall, and from 1942 to 1944 also acted as Lieutenant-Commander in charge of the Oxford University Naval Division.

In 1951 Emden’s health broke down and he resigned from the principalship of St Edmund Hall at the age of 63 and came to live with his mother at Dunstan Cottage in Old Headington. His mother Elizabeth Cowley Emden died there four years later at the age of 87 on 30 November 1955 and was buried in Headington Cemetery. Her effects came to £54,557 14s. 5d.

Emden remained in Dunstan Cottage for another 24 years until his death. He played a large part in community life in Headington. When the row of cottages at 27–33 St Andrew’s Road were condemned in the late 1930s, he and three other local inhabitants put up the money to build the present row of houses.

While living in retirement at Dunstan Cottage, Emden compiled the three-volume work A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500 (1957–9), adding the supplementary register 1501–1540 in 1974. He also produced a similar register for Cambridge.

In 1959, when the Friends of Old Headington group was founded, Dr Emden agreed to be its first President, and he organized the restoration of the ancient cross in St Andrew’s Churchyard. In that year he was also appointed a Fellow of the British Academy.

Arthur Brotherston Emden died at Dunstan Cottage in Headington at the age of 90 on 8 January 1979, and his ashes were buried in the antechapel of St Edmund Hall.

His effects came to £419,115, and he left the bulk of his estate to St Edmund Hall.

There is a diamond in his memory in the floor of the college antechapel (right), and he is also remembered as a stone grotesque on the south-east corner of St Peter-in-the-East Church (now St Edmund Hall library), and in the name of the college's Emden block.

There is a much fuller entry on Alfred Brotherston Emden in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ODNB online is available free to many public library users, including those in Oxfordshire:
put your library ticket number in the “Library Card Login” box

Alfred Brotherston Emden in Wikipedia

Portrait of Emden in the National Portrait Gallery (1934)