Richard Claverhouse Jebb

Richard Claverhouse Jebb

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

Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, OM, FBA (27 August 1841 – 9 December 1905) was a British classical scholar and politician.

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. 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 the 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^{[citation needed]} 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, and in 1905 was made a member of the Order of Merit. In 1874, he married the widow of General Adam J. Slemmer, of the United States army; she survived him.

The most important of Jebb's publications are:

• The Characters of Theophrastus (1870), text, introduction, English translation and commentary (re-edited by JE Sandys, 1909)
• The Attic Orators from Antiphon to Isaeus (2nd ed., I893), with companion volume, Selections from the Attic Orators (2nd ed, 1888)
• Bentley (1882)
• Sophocles (3rd ed., 1893) the seven plays, text, English translation and notes, the promised edition of the fragments being prevented by his death
• Bacchylides (1905), text, translation, and notes
• Homer (3rd ed., 1888), an introduction to the Iliad and Odyssey
• Modern Greece (1901)
• The Growth and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry (1893).

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 is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge. The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of his papers.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. http://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=User:Tim_Starling/ScanSet_TIFF_demo&vol=15&page=EC5A324. 
• This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.

External links

• Richard Claverhouse Jebb Papers, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
• Works by Richard Claverhouse Jebb at the Internet Archive
• Works by or about Richard Claverhouse Jebb in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Richard Claverhouse Jebb at Find-A-Grave
• British Academy Fellowship entry

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Henry Cecil Raikes Sir George Stokes	Member of Parliament for Cambridge University 1891 – 1906 With: 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