No information was available at the time of compilation.
John Taylor entered the East India Company as a cadet in 1776; he became a lieutenant in 1780, a captain in 1789, a major in 1797 and a lieutenant-colonel in 1800. He is now best known for making the journey from London to India overland in 1789, which he described in a journal published 10 years later, and was a firm advocate of advantages of the land route over the more usual journey by sea. Taylor wrote three further works on India before his death at Poona (Pune) in 1808.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Edward Backhouse Eastwick was born in Warfield, Berkshire, and educated at Charterhouse School and at Balliol and Merton Colleges, Oxford. He worked in the Indian civil service for several years before returning to Europe due to ill health. From 1845 until 1857 he was Professor of Urdu at East India College, Haileybury, Hertfordshire. From 1859 Eastwick worked in the civil service in Britain, spending substantial periods in Persia and Venezuela on government business, He became a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1866 and served as Conservative MP for Penryn and Falmouth between 1868 and 1874. In later life he wrote extensively about his experiences and translated several classic texts from Asian languages into English.
James Henry Leigh Hunt was born in Southgate, Middlesex to American parents and was educated at Christ's Hospital before becoming a clerk at the War Office. His first volume of poetry was published in 1801. In 1808 he co-founded The Examiner, a weekly newspaper, with his brother John Hunt and served as its editor for several years. During 1813-1815 the brothers were imprisoned for libel after publishing an article about the Prince Regent (later George IV) and Leigh Hunt was generally in poor health for the rest of his life. Additionally, his domestic life was unhappy and his income irregular. Hunt's poems and other works (including an autobiography) were widely read during his lifetime but now remembered more for their influence on other writers.
Florence Farr was born in 1860. She was the youngest daughter of Mary Elizabeth Whittal and Dr William Farr, a sanitary reformer and advocator of equal education and professional rights for women. She was educated at Queen's College London (1877-1880), received good reports but had no inclination to prepare for higher education. After an unsuccessful attempt at teaching (1880-1882), Farr gravitated to the theatre, appearing in minor parts and adopting the stage name, Mary Lester. In 1883 her father died, leaving her a sufficient amount to live on modestly. Her first novel The Dancing Fawn was published in 1894. That same year she became theatre producer at the Avenue Theatre, producing modern plays. Farr preached about parity for women in employment, wages etc. amongst her intellectual circle of acquaintances. George Bernard Shaw wrote that she reacted vehemently against Victorian sexual and domestic morality and was dauntless in publicly championing unpopular causes such as campaigning for the welfare of prostitutes. Farr had a fascination for the occult, Egyptology and theosophy. She conducted hermetic studies and belonged to an order of like-minded folk, The Hermetic Order of Isis-Urania Temple of The Golden Dawn of London. She published her first philosophical tracts, A Short Inquiry concerning the Hermetic Art by a Lover of Philatethes in 1894. In 1901, Florence, with a friend of Yeats', collaborated in the writing and production of two one act plays, both recounting Egyptian magical tales. Farr later quit The Golden Dawn and joined the Theosophical Society of London. Farr cultivated friendships with 'clever men'. Among her friends and correspondents were William and May Morris, George Bernard Shaw, John Quinn, Henry Paget, Dr John Todhunter and W B Yeats. In 1884 she married an actor, Mr Edward Emery (b 1863). They separated in 1888 when Mr Emery immigrated to America, according to Shaw, on account of 'some trouble (not domestic)'. Shaw wrote that Florence (who used her own surname more often than her husband's) was quite content with this situation and considered it of little importance. In 1895 she finally divorced Edward Emery on Shaw's advice. In the 1890s, Yeats used Farr's 'golden voice' as part of his quest to encourage the rebirth of spoken poetry. In 1898 made her the stage manager for his Irish Literary Theatre and she became a regular contributor to the performance of his metrical plays. She was also involved in the performance and musical composition of a number of plays at the Lyceum and Court Theatre and New Century Theatres in London, 1902-1906. In 1912, Farr sailed from England for a life in Ceylon. She had been invited by Sri Ponnambalam Ramanthan, a fellow theosophist, to teach at his newly founded College for Girls in Ceylon. As Lady Principal she supervised the teachers, care of sick children, servants and general administration. In 1917, Florence Farr died in Colombo General Hospital at the age of 56. Her body was cremated at the home of Ramanathan. In 1912 she left some of her correspondence with Clifford Bax in a locked black box only to be opened after her death. They were later published in Florence Farr, Bernard Shaw and W B Yeats by C Bax (ed.), The Cuala Press (1941). In preface to these letters Bax wrote that they 'show that she had too much personality to become a good actress' and were testament to her good humour. He described her as 'a woman who could inspire remarkable men' and predicted that she would be remembered primarily on account of her private friendships with eminent intellectuals of the time.
Frederic Herbert Trench was born in Avoncore, County Cork, Ireland, and educated at Hailebury College and at Keble College, Oxford, where he studied modern history. After graduating he was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford during 1889-1891 before spending 11 years working for the Board of Education. Trench became known as a poet in the early 1900s. Between 1909 and 1911 he was also artistic director of the Haymarket Theatre, London. From 1911 he lived mainly in Settignano, Italy, where the life and land inspired many of his later poems.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Elinor Glyn was born in Jersey and brought up in Canada and in Jersey. She married Henry Clayton Glyn in 1892. Her first novel, based on her experiences as a child and young woman, was published in 1900 and became a bestseller. Glyn travelled widely in Europe and the United States and her later writings continued to be influenced by her unconventional experiences and opinions. Her most famous work, the explicit Three Weeks (1907) was made into a film in 1923 and Glyn herself worked for several years as a writer for the Hollywood film industry.
Alfred Charles William Harmsworth was born in County Dublin, Ireland, brought up in London and educated at schools in Lincolnshire and London before becoming a journalist. In his early 20s he founded his own publishing business with backing from his brother Harold; as well as several successful magazines, he purchased the Evening News in 1894 and launched the new Daily Mail (1896) and Daily Mirror (1903) newspapers. He also owned The Observer between 1905 and 1912 and purchased The Times in 1908. Harmsworth was made a baronet in 1904, Baron Northcliffe of the Isle of Thanet in 1905 and a viscount in 1917. Lord Northcliffe was proud of his independence from politicians and, through his newspapers, was very influential. After the First World War, his physical and mental health deteriorated rapidly until his death in 1922. Both during his lifetime and subsequently, he was regarded as one of the greatest figures in modern journalism.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
James Cornwallis was the son of James Cornwallis (afterwards Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield and 4th Earl Cornwallis) and his wife Catharine, daughter of Galfridus Mann. The younger James Cornwallis, who adopted the surname Mann by royal licence in 1814, in conformance with the terms of his maternal grandfather's will, succeeded his father as 5th Earl in 1824. He had no heirs and the title became extinct on his death.
Jean-Baptiste Colbert was born in Reims in 1665. He started working for the French war office aged 21 and rose to greater influence during the unsettled Fronde period (1648-1653). After Cardinal Mazarin's death in 1661 he became a high-ranking government minister, concerned with economic reform and naval affairs. His son, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Marquis de Seignelay (1651-1690) succeded him as Secretary of State of the Navy.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Charles Cockerell was born at Bishops Hull, Somerset in 1755. He was educated at Winchester College. Between 1776 and 1801 he worked for the East India Company in Bengal, spending several years as postmaster general in Calcutta. On his return to Britain, Cockerell became a successful businessman in London, with a house at Hyde Park Corner and a country estate at Sezincote, Gloucestershire. He maintained a lifelong interest in India. He served as an MP between 1802 and his death in 1837. He was made a baronet in 1809.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Eyre Massey Shaw was born in County Cork, Ireland, and educated locally and at Trinity College Dublin. He spent several years in the navy before becoming superintendent of the police and fire services in Belfast in 1860; his success in this role led to his appointment a year later as the head of the London Fire Engine Establishment, later to become the Metropolitan Fire Brigade. Shaw was uncomfortable working under the new London County Council (constituted in 1889) and resigned from the job in 1891; he received a knighthood on his retirement.
Cyrus West Field was born in Stockbridge, Massachussetts. His successful business ventures in New York City as a young man enabled him to retire aged 33. With Charles Tilston Bright and others, he formed the Atlantic Telegraph Company, which laid the first telegraph cable between Europe and North America in 1858. In later life, Field lost his money due to bad investments and was bankrupt at the time of his death.
Henry Hobhouse was born near Castle Cary, Somerset, and educated at Eton and at Brasenose College, Oxford. He subsequently studied law and was called to the bar in 1801. Hobhouse became a civil servant, working sucessively as Solicitor to HM Customs, Treasury Solicitor and Permanent Under-Secretary to the Home Department, from which he retired in 1827. In 1826 he had become Keeper of the State Papers, where his main task was superintending the publication of The State Papers of Henry VIII (11 volumes, 1830-1852). The State Papers Office was absorbed by the Public Record Office in 1854, the year of both Hobhouse's death and of the birth of his grandson and namesake, the politician Henry Hobhouse.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Prince Alexander of Teck was born in 1874. The third son of Francis, Duke of Teck, and Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck (a granddaughter of George III and first cousin of Queen Victoria). Alexander's elder sister, Mary, was later Queen consort to George V. Prince Alexander was educated at Eton College and Sandhurst, before serving in the army in India and South Africa. He married Princess Alice of Albany (Queen Victoria's granddaughter) in 1904. The British Royal Family decided to discard German-sounding names during the First World War, so in July 1917, the Tecks adopted the surname Cambridge; Prince Alexander was created Earl of Athlone shortly afterwards. Athlone served as Governor-General of South Africa between 1923 and 1931 and of Canada between 1940 and 1946. He was also Chancellor of the University of London from 1932 until 1955. Both his sons predeceased him and the peerage became extinct when he died.
Stephen Spender was born in London, brought up in London and Norfolk, and educated at University College School in Hampstead and University College, Oxford. His first book of poetry was published in 1930 and was followed by many other works of poetry and prose, including World within World (1951), a novel heavily influenced by his earlier life and complicated sexuality. He co-edited the literary magazine Encounter 1953 until 1967, when he resigned over a funding scandal. In his later years, Spender was acclaimed as one of the leading poets writing in English and held several academic positions, including a chair at University College London (1970-1975). He received a CBE in 1962 and was knighted in 1983.
Frederic George Kenyon was born in London, brought up in Shropshire, and educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford. He began work in the manuscripts department at the British Museum in 1889 and became known as an expert on both Greek papyri and biblical texts. He was appointed director of the museum in 1909, retaining the position until he retired in 1930. Kenyon was a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Society of Antiquaries, served terms as President of the Classical Association and the Hellenic Society, and received numerous academic honours. He was knighted in 1912.
John Henry Pyle Pafford was Goldsmiths' Librarian of the University of London Library from 1945 to 1967. He published works on librarianship, including Library Cooperation in Europe (1935) and American and Canadian Libraries: some notes on a visit in the summer of 1947 (1949), and acted as an editor of The Year's Work in Librarianship during 1939-1950. He was also an editor of literary texts, notably the Arden edition of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.
Walter Wilson Greg was born in Wimbledon, Surrey, and educated at Harrow School and at Trinity College, Cambridge. He joined the Bibliographical Society in 1898 and subsequently complied several bibliographies and critical works relating to English drama and theatre, mainly from the Elizabethan and earlier periods. He was also librarian of Trinity College between 1907 and 1913. Greg was a major shareholder of and occasional contributor to The Economist magazine, founded by his maternal grandfather. He was knighted in 1950 for services to the study of literature.
Dorothy Shakespear was the daughter of the novelist Olivia Shakespear. She married the poet Ezra Pound in 1914.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Eberhard Bethge was born in Warchau, near Magdeburg, Germany, and studied theology at several German universities. During the 1930s, he joined Germany's anti-Nazi resistance and the associated Bekennende Kirche, becoming a close associate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; he married Bonhoeffer's niece Renate in 1943. After the Second World War, Bethge worked as a Lutheran pastor in Britain and in Germany. He also gave university lectures and wrote several books, including the definitive biography of Bonhoeffer.
Francis Burdett was born Derbyshire in 1770. He was educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church Oxford. He married Sophia Coutts, daughter of the banker Thomas Coutts, in 1793 and succeeded to the baronetcy in 1797. Burdett entered parliament as MP for Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, in 1796 and later served as MP for Westminster. As a serving politician he was committed to parliamentary reform and radical causes and was once briefly imprisoned for breach of parliamentary privilege.
Ernest Clarke worked as a Civil Servant and for the London Stock Exchange before serving as Secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society of England (1887-1905). He also lectured at Cambridge on agricultural history between 1896 and 1899. Clarke was also a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and was active in the Folk Song Society and the Chartered Institute of Secretaries. He was knighted in 1898.
Henry Carey Baird was born in Bridesburg, Pennsylvania in 1825. He became a partner in the Philadelphia publishing house of Carey and Hart in 1845, but left in 1849 to establish his own firm, H C Baird and Co. Baird also wrote on economics. The economist and publisher Henry Charles Carey was his uncle.
Henry Holland was born in Knutsford, Cheshire in 1788. He studied in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London before becoming a physician. From 1816 until his death he practised in London, where his clientele included many rich and famous people, including Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Holland enjoyed travel: he journeyed widely in Europe throughout his life and visited North America eight times. He was made a baronet in 1853.
Born Pierre-Etienne Du Ponceau in France in 1760, Peter Stephen DuPonceau emigrated to America in 1777. He joined the American Philosophical Society in 1791, eventually serving as President from 1827 until his death in 1844. He was awarded the Prix Volney in 1838 for his work on the grammar of indigenous North American languages.
This material was created by multiple individuals or institutions.
William Eden was born in 1744. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, and subsequently trained as a lawyer; he was called to the bar in 1768. He had a strong interest in the philosophy of jurisprudence and believed firmly in legal reform. In the 1770s, as an under-secretary of state and later MP for New Woodstock, he was able to effect some changes to the legal and penal system. He also published several legal and political works. In the 1880s and early 1890s Eden was a diplomat in France and Spain. He was given an Irish peerage in 1789 and a British peerage in 1793.
Stanley Arthur Morison was born in Wanstead, Essex in 1889. He was educated in London. He worked as a clerk after leaving school, but after becoming interested in letter forms he worked as an assistant and later a consultant to various publishing houses. He became a freelance authority and author on typography. One of Morison's most lasting achievements was his advocacy of using a more modern typeface for The Times newspaper; it first appeared in Times New Roman in 1932. He became a Roman Catholic in 1908.
William Wallace was born and brought up in Dysart, Fifeshire, where he learned arithmetic from his father. Living in Edinburgh as a young man, he educated himself in mathematics and science before going to work as a teacher in Perth. Having become a well-known mathematician, Wallace left Scotland in 1803 to teach at the Royal Military College at Marlow, Buckinghamshire. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1804. Marlow returned to Scotland permanently in 1819 when he became Professor of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, a position he held until retiring in 1834.
Michael Faraday was born in London in 1791. He was apprenticed to a bookbinder. He became deeply interested in chemistry and began to work for the retired Professor Humphrey Davy and for the Royal Institution, becoming its Director in 1925. From the 1820s he conducted many experiments in electromagnetism and made great advances in the understanding of electricity and magnetism; his work laid the foundations that have made practical use of electricity possible. From 1829 until 1952 he was Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, and from 1836 to 1863 he was a member of the University of London Senate. He married Sarah Bernard (1800-1879) in 1821 and they were both practising members of the Sandemanian Christian sect.
Osbert Lancaster was born in London in 1908. He was educated at Charterhouse and at Lincoln College, Oxford, before entering the Slade School of Art. He spent most of his working life as a cartoonist for the Daily Express newspaper; his work was considered witty and topical. Lancaster was awarded the CBE in 1953 and knighted in 1975.
William Miles Malleson was born in Croydon, Surrey in 1888. He was educated at Brighton College and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before entering the Academy of Dramatic Art. He became known as a gifted theatre actor, particularly in comic roles, before turning to films (as both actor and writer) in the 1930s; after the Second World War he returned to stage acting and had some success as a dramatist. The family planning pioneer Dr Joan Malleson was his second wife.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Peter Mackenzie was born in 1799. He originally trained as a lawyer, but eventually turned to journalism. He founded The Loyal Reformers' Gazette, a periodical supporting parliamentary reform, in 1831; Mackenzie lived and worked mainly in Glasgow. His book Old Reminiscences of Glasgow (1865) was a rather unflattering portrait of the city and many of its inhabitants, but he remained a popular figure among the general public.
Elias Avery Loew was born in Moscow, Russia, and emigrated to New York City as a child; he became an American citizen in 1900 and changed the spelling of his surname to Lowe in 1918. Lowe was educated at the College of the City of New York, Cornell University, the University of Halle and the University of Munich, earning his PhD in 1907. He lectured in palaeography at the University of Oxford from 1913 until 1936, when he was given a professorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The author of the seminal Codices Latini antiquiores (11 vols, 1934-1971) Lowe was recognized as one of the world's leading researchers in palaeography. He received many academic honours, including the Bibliographical Society's gold medal (1959).
Hermione Llewellyn was born in Gloucestershire and brought up in Wales. Whilst working in Australia as personal assistant to the Governor of New South Wales, she met Daniel Knox, Earl of Ranfurly, whom she married in 1939. Following miliatary service in the Second World War, Lord Ranfurly was appointed Governor of the Bahamas in 1953. Whilst living in Nassau, Lady Ranfurly founded the Ranfurly Library Service, in response to the lack of libraries and school books available in the Bahamas. After the couple's return to Britain, she expanded the service (later renamed Book Aid International) to other parts of the English-speaking world; in 1970 she received an OBE in recognition of her work. Lady Ranfurly also published a memoir of her wartime experiences, To War With Whitaker (1994).
No information was available at the time of compilation.