Richard Doddridge Blackmore was born in Berkshire in 1825. He was educated at schools in Devon and Somerset and at Exeter College, Oxford. After graduating, he studied law and was called to the bar in 1852; he practised law for some years but also worked as a teacher and journalist during that time. After inheriting money in 1857, he became a fruit farmer in Teddington, Middlesex, where he lived for the rest of his life. He served on the fruit and vegetable committee of the Royal Horticultural Society from 1883 until 1892. Blackmore also wrote poetry and several novels, including the bestselling Lorna Doone.
George Rose was born in Scotland and brought up by his uncle in Middlesex. After serving in the navy for several years, he entered the civil service, eventually rising to Secretary of the Treasury. He entered parliament in 1788 as MP for Lymington, Hampshire, and subsequently served as MP for Christchurch, Hampshire, from 1790 until his death. In the Commons, he was a strong supporter of Pitt the Younger and continued to advocate many of the latter's policies after his death.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Henri Cernuschi was born in Milan in 1821. He became involved in the Revolutions of 1848 when still student. In 1850 he left Italy for France, where he became a successful banker and writer on economics, known for his advocacy of bimetallism. He was expelled from France in 1870 during the last days of Napoleon III's rule, but returned a few months later when the Imperials regime collapsed. During the 1870s Cernuschi travelled in East Asia and collected many examples of Asian art. On his death, he bequeathed his collection to the City of Paris, where today it is open to the public as the Musée Cernuschi.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
William Scott joined the Edinburgh Phrenological Society in 1822 and became its president in 1825. The renowned phrenologist George Combe was a relation of his.
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.
Sir (Henry) David St Leger Brooke Selwyn Cunynghame studied at St John's College Cambridge, where his tutors included Alfred Marshall, before pursuing a varied career in both law and the civil service. He was secretary and chair of many committees and Royal Commissions. Among his numerous outside interests, he was a keen amateur economist and his published work in that area was praised by John Maynard Keynes.
William Cobbett was born in Farnham, Surrey, in 1863. He enlisted as a soldier, and was also a tutor before turning to political writing. He published pamphlets in both Britain and America, usually under the pan name of Peter Porcupine. He owned farms on both sides of the Atlantic. He espoused a mixture of radical and conservative views and was much concerned with rural distress and the state of English farming. He was briefly MP for Oldham, Lancashire, in the 1830s.
John Gale Jones was born in Middlesex in 1769. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School before practising as an apothecary and surgeon. During the 1790s he became known as an active political radical, which brought him to the notice of prominent radicals but probably had a negative effect on his medical career. He continued to campagin politically until about 1819, with little success, and served two prison terms for libel.
Arthur Hugh Clough was born in Liverpool and brought up partly in South Carolina and partly in England, where he was educated at Rugby School and later at Balliol College, Oxford. He became a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, in 1842 and taught there until 1848, the same year that his first major poem, The Bothie, was published. From 1848 until 1851 he was head of University Hall, a collegiate residence for students attending lectures at University College London, and in 1850 he was appointed professor of English language and literature at University College, andhe later becme an examiner in the Education Office. Clough was deeply influenced by the conflicting movements within Victorian religion, though he had ceased to accept Christian dogma by the late 1840s, and by radical ideas in politics. His poetry was critically acclaimed during his lifetime and continued to be so for many years after his death.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Henry Austin Dobson, civil servant and poet, was born on 18 January 1840. After leaving school at the age of 16, he joined the Board of Trade where he remained until his retirement as Principal in 1901. He had an enduring enthusiasm for the eighteenth century and for poetry. He composed a large quantity of his own poetry and was well known for his adaptation of old French verses. His earliest volume of poetry was Vignettes in Rhyme, (1873). Later in his life, Dobson turned his attention increasingly to prose, resulting in several volumes of essays including Eighteenth Century Prose (in 3 series; 1892, 1894 and 1896). He died in 1921.
Frances Mary Beardmore was the daughter of the civil engineer Nathaniel Beardmore (1816-1872) and his wife Mary. She married Henry Austin Dobson in 1868 and they had 10 children.
John Sinclair was born in Thurso, Caithness in 1754. He was educated at the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Oxford. He qualified as a lawyer in both Scotland and England but never practised law. In 1780 he entered the House of Commons as MP for Caithness, subsequently serving as MP for several English and Scottish constituencies between 1784 and 1811. Sir John wrote several works on economics and agriculture and became the first president of the Board of Agriculture in 1793. His Statistical Account of Scotland popularized the use of the word 'statistics' in English.
Arthur Helps was born in Balham, Surrey in 1813. He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge. After graduating, he entered the civil service, initially as private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1843, Helps purchased a large estate in Hampshire and subsequently spent much of his time there writing both novels and non-fiction. He was concerned with social reform, which he addressed both in his writing and through fundraising. From 1860 until his death he served as Clerk of the Privy Council and edited some of the royal family's papers for publication. He was knighted in 1872.
Sara Fricker was brought up in Bristol and married the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge there in 1794. Their marriage was not happy and they spent long periods living apart, Sara bringing up their children in the household of her sister and brother-in-law, Edith and Robert Southey, in Keswick, Cumberland. Her youngest child, also called Sara, became a well-known writer.
Sara Coleridge was born in Keswick, Cumberland, and brought up by her mother (also Sara) in the household of her aunt and uncle, Edith and Robert Southey. As a child she met many of her family's literary friends and acquaintances, including William Wordsworth. Her first book, a translation from Latin of a work of anthropology, was published when she was 19. In subsequent years, Sara became reacquainted with her estranged father, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and later edited posthumous editions of his work. She married her cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843), in 1829 but continued her literary work alongside her domestic responsibilities as a wife, mother, and later widow. She remained a prominent figure on the London literary scene until her death from cancer in 1852.
Robert Bloomfield was born in Honington, Suffolk, in 1766. As a boy he worked on his uncle's farm. He then trained as a cobbler under his older brother, spending much of his spare time reading and later also writing poetry. His first major (and most famous) poem, The Farmer's Boy, was begun in 1796 and eventually published in 1800, becoming both a popular and a critical success. Despite being granted a pension by the Duke of Grafton, Bloomfield continued to make shoes and Aeolian harps alongside his literary work for some years and he and his family were never financially secure.
Nassau William Senior was born in 1790. He was educated at Eton and Magdalen College, Oxford University, gaining an MA in 1815. He became a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, London, in 1819. He held the position of Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, 1825-1830 and 1847-1852, and was a member of the Poor Law Commission in 1833, for which he wrote the report (1834). Senior was a Master in Chancery from 1836 to 1855. A list of his publications may be found in the British Library catalogue.
Samuel Smiles was born in Haddington, East Lothian in 1812. He studied medicine in Edinburgh. He also became a journalist, lecturer and campaigner for political reform, writing radical articles for regional newsapers, most often in Leeds. In later years he worked for railway companies and the National Provident Institution, and also became a noted biographer. Smiles's radical views mellowed into liberalism and his writings turned towards advocating self-improvement. His book Self Help, with illustrations of character and conduct. (1859) became a bestseller and was translated into more than ten languages.
Montague Rhodes James was born in Kent in 1862. He was educated at Temple Grove School and Eton College before gaining a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge. He graduated with a BA in 1886 and became a fellow of King's in 1887, becoming Dean of King's shortly after; he remained Dean until he was elected Provost (head of the college) in 1905. He was also Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum from 1893 until 1908 and Vice-Chancellor of the university during 1913-1915; after the First World War he served as Provost of Eton until his death in 1936. James was an accomplished biblical scholar and an authority on medieval manuscripts, but is now better known as the author (under the name M R James) of short stories on supernatural topics, which have strongly influenced subsequent writers of horror fiction.
Silvanus Phillips Thompson was born into a Quaker family in York in 1851. He became a science teacher at the Bootham School in York, in 1873. He later taught physics at University College Bristol (now the University of Bristol) before becoming professor of physics at the new City and Guilds of London Institute in Finsbury in 1878, aged 27. Thompson's research was mainly in the field of electromagnetism and optics, but he had wide interests outside science and was much concerned with technical education. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1891. He is now best remembered for the textbooks Elementary Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism (1890) and Calculus Made Easy (1910). His first name is sometimes spelt 'Sylvanus'.
Thomas James Wise was born in Gravesend, Kent in 1859, and was brought up in London. He joined the firm of Herman Rubeck and Co (dealers in scents and flavourings) aged 16, rising to become chief clerk and later a partner in the business. Alongside his business activities, Wise was a prolific book collector and an amateur writer and publisher. By the 1920s he had become prominent in the rare book trade and served as President of the Bibliographical Society for 1922-1924. Not until the 1930s was it discovered that Wise and his associate Harry Buxton Forman had produced and sold many forgeries and deliberately antedated reprints, and it was not until after his death that the extent of his deceptions (including thefts from the British Museum) and inaccuracy of his bibliographies were fully appreciated.
Frances Louise ('Loie') Greenhalgh married Thomas James Wise in 1900. There is no evidence that she ever assisted in his fradulent activities.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Samuel Roberts was born in Sheffield in 1763. He began work in his family's silverware factory aged 14. From the age of 27 he wrote extensively on social issues such as poverty, gambling and crime, initially in local newspapers and later also in pamphlets and books. He always considered writing secondary to his successful business career and through choice never made a profit from it. His opposition to slavery and child labour brought him into contact with Willliam Wilberforce, who became a close friend.
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.
Gaston Paris was born in Avenay, Marne, France, and developed a love of French literature in early childhood. He became Professor of Medieval Literature at the College de France in 1872 and Director of the College in 1895. He was elected to the Academie francaise in 1896. Paris's work as a linguistic scholar, literary critic and medievalist (including contributions to the Histoire litteraire de la France) was both acclaimed and influential. He died at Cannes.
Robert Browning was born in Camberwell, London in 1812. He was educated locally and at home, where he enjoyed reading and writing poetry from an early age. He entered the new University of London in 1828 but left after a year to study privately, with no profession in mind. His first poem was published in 1833 and during subsequent years he became well known, though not always popular with the critics. He married fellow poet Elizabeth Moulton Barrett (1806-1861), in 1846 and they lived mainly in Italy; Browning returned to London permanently after her death in 1861. During the 1870s and 1880s he became one of Britain's most famous living poets, and was a critical as well as a commercial success at the time of his death. His best known works include Porphyria's Lover (1836) and The Ring and the Book (1868-1869).
Arthur William Rücker was born in Clapham, Surrey, and educated locally before studying mathematics and natural science at Brasenose College, Oxford. From 1871 to 1874 he was a fellow and lecturer at Brasenose before becoming a professor at the new Yorkshire College of Science, Leeds. In 1886 he moved to London to become a professor at the Royal College of Science, serving as College Principal from 1901 until his retirement in 1908. His research topics centered around electromagnetism and liquids. Rücker became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884 and received its medal in 1891; he also served as President of the Physical Society (1893-1895) and the British Association (1901). He was knighted in 1902.
George Rostrevor Hamilton was educated at Oxford University before becoming a civil servant. His first book of poems was published in 1916 and he later compiled anthologies of Greek and Latin verse for Nonesuch Press. Hamliton was a director of the Poetry Book Society and corresponded with many other literary figures of his time. He was knighted in 1951.
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.
William Fiennes was born in Oxfordshire in 1582. He was educated at Winchester College and at New College, Oxford. He succeeded his father as Baron Saye and Sele in 1613 and was made a viscount in 1624; he was active in the House of Lords and, staunchly protestant, was often deeply opposed to the policies of King Charles I. During the Civil War he supported and fought for the Parliamentarians; he was opposed to the King's execution, however, and retired from active politics during the Protectorate. Fiennes accepted the Restoration of the monarchy and was made a privy counsellor by Charles II in 1660, less than two years before his death.
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.
John Eliot was the son of John Eliot (1735-1813), a Quaker merchant and London underwriter. John the younger's older sister Mariabella Howard (1769-1852) was the wife of the chemist and meterologist Luke Howard (1772-1864) and the mother of John Eliot Howard (1807-1883), famous for his research into quinine.
Samuel Quincy was born in Braintree (in an area now part of the city of Quincy), Massachusetts, in 1734. He was educated at Harvard. After graduating, he studied law and was called to the Suffolk bar in 1758. Whilst his younger brother Josiah, also a lawyer, supported the American revolutionary movement, Samuel supported the British colonial government. He left America for England in 1775, shortly after the Revolution broke out, to take up a job with the British government; his wife Hannah, whom he had married in 1761, and their children remained in New England with her brother Henry Hill. In 1780 he moved to Antigua to become Comptroller of Customs, where his family were able to rejoin him. Quincy was fond of music and theatre, wrote poetry, and kept a detailed diary of his time in London and Paris.
No information relating to Miss Grace W Treadwell was available at the time of compilation.
John Newton was born in Wapping, London, in 1725. He was the son of a master mariner and went to sea aged 11. As a young sailor he was heavily involved in the slave trade, something he regretted in later life. From 1748-1749 onwards Newton was deeply religious in the evangelical Christian tradition. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1764 and was curate-in-charge at Olney, Buckinghamshire, for 16 years until he was given the benefice of St Mary Woolnoth, City of London, in 1780. Newton also wrote religious poetry and was close friends with the poet William Cowper. His prose works include a memoir detailing his early life as a slave trader, as well as published collections of his letters and sermons.
Henry Enfield Roscoe was born in London in 1833, into an nonconformist family. His paternal grandfather had been the banker and writer William Roscoe, his father was the legal writer Henry Roscoe, and the poet Mary Anne Jevons was his aunt. Henry Enfield Roscoe was brought up and educated in Liverpool before studying chemistry at University College London and at Heidelberg. Returning to Britain, he was initially a private researcher in London and subsequently (from 1857) a professor at Owens College, Manchester, where he came to be recognized as one of the world's leading teachers of chemistry. Roscoe became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863 and was knighted in 1884. He served as Liberal MP for South Manchester between 1885 and 1895, and as Vice-Chancellor of the University of London between 1896 and 1902.
Tom Turner was an official in the British Post Office, and a poet and short story writer. His substantial collection of books, mainly poetry but including some fiction and other prose, is now held in the library of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Robert William Speaight was born in Kent and read English at Lincoln College, Oxford, before becoming a professional actor. He converted to Roman Catholicism in the 1930s and became well-known for his performance in T S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and for his portrayal of Jesus Christ in the radio drama The Man Born to be King (1942). Speaight was also a published novelist, theatre director and drama critic, particularly of the works of Shakespeare.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
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.
No information was available at the time of compilation.
Ethel Edith Mannin was born and educated in London. Trained as a typist, she worked as a copywriter and editor before publishing her first novel in 1923. She subsequently wrote nearly a hundred books, both fiction and non-fiction, generally producing two each year, and her left-wing political views influenced much of her work. Mannin was married twice (to the writers John Alexander Porteus and Reginald Reynolds) but wrote under her own surname.
No information was available at the time of compilation.