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. 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. In 1905 he was made a member of the Order of Merit.

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 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.

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.

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.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

External links

• Richard Claverhouse Jebb Papers, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections
• Works by or about Richard Claverhouse Jebb at the Internet Archive
• Template:Worldcat id
• Richard Claverhouse Jebb at Find a Grave
• British Academy Fellowship entry
• Trinity College Chapel