Arnold was educated at Rugby, where his father, Thomas Arnold, was the influential headmaster from 1827 to 1842. Arnold senior was a Broad Churchman: he advocated the reform of the Anglican Church, supported measures such as Catholic Emancipation, and attacked the Oxford or The Tractarian Movement. His educational practices combined lots of athletic activity to foster team spirit and "manliness" with a strong sense of moral purpose; the next generation's application of these principles in their Christian Socialism became known as "muscular Christianity." Both muscular Christianity and Arnold's Rugby were fictionalized in Thomas Hughes' novel Tom Brown's Schooldays.
Matthew Arnold studied on a fellowship at the University of Oxford, and later became an inspector of schools, a post he held for most of the rest of his life. Although he fell in love with a French woman, written of as "Marguerite," during travels in Switzerland in 1848, they did not marry, and Arnold later married an English woman.
Arnold is important both as a poet and as an essayist. He wrote most of his poems, of which "Dover Beach" is one of the best-known, by 1855, after which he turned almost entirely to essays and lectures. In 1857 he was elected Professor of poetry at Oxford.
Arnold was, from the time when they were both at Rugby, a friend of Arthur Hugh Clough. Although more conservative than Clough, he was just as deeply concerned with social problems, and in his extensive lectures and essays on literature, education, and culture sought to analyze and present solutions to them. He believed that the problems of his day were caused by the failure of faith and religion, and looked to poetry and culture to provide a sense of unity and a moral guide in society. He had a profound influence on education in general and English studies in particular, where his legacy is still felt today.