Richard Claverhouse Jebb

Richard Claverhouse Jebb.
"Ajax MP". Caricature by Spy published in Vanity Fair in 1904.

Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb OM MP FBA (27 August 1841 – 9 December 1905) was a British classical scholar and politician. He was a Member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, from 1859.

Life

He was born in Dundee, Scotland. His father was a well-known barrister, and his grandfather a judge. His sister was the social reformer Eglantyne Louisa Jebb, founder of the Home Arts and Industries Association; his niece, Eglantyne's daughter Eglantyne Jebb, co-founded the Save the Children Fund and wrote the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

He was educated at Charterhouse School and at Trinity College, Cambridge.[1] He won the Porson and Craven scholarships, was senior classic in 1862, and became fellow and tutor of his college in 1863. From 1869 to 1875, he was public orator of Cambridge University; Professor of Greek at Glasgow from 1875 to 1889, and Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge from 1889 until his death. His successor was Henry Jackson. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1902.

In 1891 he was elected Member of Parliament for Cambridge University; he was knighted in 1900. Jebb was acknowledged to be one of the most brilliant classical scholars of his time, a humanist and an unsurpassed translator from and into the classical languages. A collected volume, Translations into Greek and Latin, appeared in 1873 (ed. 1909). He received many honorary degrees from European and American universities, including when in May 1902 he was at Carnavon to receive the honorary degree D.Litt. (Doctor of Letters) from the University of Wales during the ceremony to install the Prince of Wales (later King George V) as Chancellor of that university.[2] In 1905 he was made a member of the Order of Merit.

The most important of Jebb's publications are:

His translation of the Rhetoric of Aristotle was published posthumously under the editorship of J. E. Sandys (1909). A selection from his Essays and Addresses, and a subsequent volume, Life and Letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (with critical introduction by A. W. Verrall) were published by his widow in 1907; see also an appreciative notice by J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, iii. (1908).

He married Caroline Lane Reynolds, daughter of Reverend John Reynolds, on 18 August 1874; Caroline Lane Reynolds was born in 1840 in Evansburg, Pennsylvania. She was married in 1856 to US Army Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer and the couple lived at military outposts in South Carolina, Florida, and Wyoming Territory. After his death in 1868 she lived briefly in Cambridge, England, and was visiting Paris at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. In 1874 she married Richard Claverhouse Jebb and joined social circles embracing George Eliot, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, and Bret Harte. His wife was a member of the Ladies Dining Society in Cambridge, with 11 other members.

He was buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.[3]

His wife died and was cremated in America, but her ashes were interred in his Cambridge grave.

The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers.

Notes

  1. "Jeb, Richard Claverhouse (JB858RC)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  2. "The Royal visit to Wales". The Times (36759). London. 5 May 1902. p. 10.
  3. A Guide to Churchill College, Cambridge: text by Dr. Mark Goldie, pages 62 and 63 (2009)

References

Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Richard Claverhouse Jebb
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Henry Cecil Raikes
Sir George Stokes
Member of Parliament for Cambridge University
1891–1906
With: Sir George Stokes to 1892
Sir John Eldon Gorst from 1892
Succeeded by
Samuel Henry Butcher
John Frederick Peel Rawlinson
Academic offices
Preceded by
Benjamin Hall Kennedy
Regius Professor of Greek Cambridge University
1889–1905
Succeeded by
Henry Jackson
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