Lister, a pupil of Sharpey, became Professor of Surgery successively at Glasgow, Edinburgh and King’s College, London. He was the first medical man in Britain to be raised to the peerage. The founder of the antiseptic principle, his work had a profound effect upon modern surgery and obstetrics. It is to be remembered that Oliver Wendell Holmes and Ignaz Semmelweis had both, before Lister, striven without success to obtain the adoption of antisepsis in obstetrics. Because Lister never wrote any books, his Collected papers remain his lasting monument. Lister's collected works were "prepared for the press by a Committee consisting of:" Sir Hector C. Cameron, Sir. W. Watson Cheyne, Rickman J. Godlee, C. J. Martin, Dawson Williams.

Sir Rickman Godlee’s biography of Lister appeared (2nd ed.) in 1918. A shorter biography was published by H. C. Cameron in 1948, and another by D. Guthrie in 1949. See also R. Fisher, Joseph Lister, New York: Stein & Day, 1977. Digital facsimile of the 1909 edition from the Internet Archive at this link.