Richard Claverhouse Jebb

{{Short description|British classical scholar and politician (1841–1905)}}

{{Infobox officeholder

| honorific-prefix =

| name = Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb

| honorific-suffix = {{postnominals|country=GBR|OM|FBA|FRSE|LLD}}

| image = Richard Claverhouse Jebb - Imagines philologorum.jpg

| alt =

| caption =

| constituency_MP = Cambridge University

| parliament = United Kingdom

| term_start = 1891

| term_end = 1905

| alongside = {{unbulleted list| George Stokes to 1892 | John Eldon Gorst from 1892}}

| predecessor = {{unbulleted list| Henry Cecil Raikes | George Stokes}}

| successor = {{unbulleted list| Samuel Henry Butcher | John Frederick Peel Rawlinson}}

| birth_date = {{birth date|df=y|1841|8|27}}

| birth_place = Dundee, Scotland

| death_date = {{death date and age|df=y|1905|12|9|1841|8|27}}

| death_place = Springfield House, Cambridge, England

| resting_place = St Giles Cemetery, Cambridge, England

| party = Conservative

| relatives = {{unbulleted list|

Robert Jebb (father)

Emily Harriet Horsley (mother)

Eglantyne Louisa Jebb (sister)}}

}}

Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb {{postnominals|country=GBR|OM|FBA|FRSE|LLD}} (27 August 1841 – 9 December 1905) was a British classical scholar and MP for Cambridge.

Life

File:Richard Claverhouse Jebb, Vanity Fair, 1904-10-20.jpg published in Vanity Fair in 1904.]]

Jebb was born in Dundee, Scotland, to Robert, a well-known Irish barrister, and Emily Harriet Horsley, daughter of the Reverend Heneage Horsley, Dean of Brechin. His grandfather Richard Jebb had been a judge of the Court of King's Bench (Ireland). His sister was the social reformer Eglantyne Louisa Jebb, founder of the Home Arts and Industries Association.

File:Shakespeare Society, Cambridge, 1873 cropped.jpg]]

Jebb was educated at St Columba's College, Dublin 1853–55 and at Charterhouse School 1855–1858. He then studied Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge{{acad|id=JB858RC|name=Jeb, Richard Claverhouse}} where he became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, an intellectual society, from 1859.

Jebb 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.

On 18 August 1874, Jebb married Caroline Lane Reynolds, born in 1840 in Evansburg, Pennsylvania, whose first husband had been US Army Lieutenant Adam J. Slemmer. After his death in 1868, Caroline lived briefly in Cambridge.Gwen Raverat, Period Piece

From 1875 to 1889 Jebb was Professor of Greek at Glasgow, and the couple initially lived in that city, spending their summers in Cambridge. In 1889 Jebb was appointed Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge, following the death of the incumbent, Benjamin Hall Kennedy, and the couple moved permanently to Cambridge.Gwen Raverat, Period Piece

In 1891 Jebb was elected Member of Parliament for Cambridge University, he was knighted in 1900, and he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1902. He received many honorary degrees from European and American universities, and in May 1902 at Caernarfon received the honorary degree of DLitt from the University of Wales during the ceremony to install the Prince of Wales (later King George V) as Chancellor of that university.{{Cite newspaper The Times|title=The Royal visit to Wales|date=5 May 1902|page=10|issue=36759|}} In 1904, he was elected a member to the American Philosophical Society.{{Cite web |title=APS Member History |url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1904&year-max=&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced |access-date=2021-06-28 |website=search.amphilsoc.org}} In 1905, he was made a member of the Order of Merit.

Jebb died at his home, Springfield House{{cite book|title=Biographical Index of Former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002|date=July 2006|publisher=The Royal Society of Edinburgh|isbn=0-902-198-84-X|url=https://www.royalsoced.org.uk/cms/files/fellows/biographical_index/fells_indexp1.pdf}} in Cambridge, on 9 December 1905 and was buried at the St Giles Cemetery (now known as the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground) in the town.A Guide to Churchill College, Cambridge: text by Mark Goldie, pp. 62, 63 (2009) Caroline Jebb died and was cremated in America, her ashes being returned to Cambridge for interment in her husband's grave.

Works

File:Jebb.png

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.{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}} A collected volume, Translations into Greek and Latin, appeared in 1873 (ed. 1909).

Jebb's publications include:

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., 1893), 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{{Cite book|url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008644071|title=Modern Greece; two lectures delivered before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, with papers on 'The progress of Greece' and 'Byron in Greece|first=Richard Claverhouse|last=Jebb|date=24 April 1901|publisher=Macmillan and Co., Limited|via=HathiTrust}} (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,{{cite journal|title=Review of Essays and Addresses by Sir R. C. Jebb|journal=The Athenaeum|issue=4158|date=July 6, 1907|pages=9–10|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=__I_PcOFSw8C&pg=PA9}} 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;{{cite journal|title=Review of Life and Letters of Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb, O.M., Litt.D. by Caroline Jebb with a chapter by A. W. Verrall|journal=The Athenaeum|issue=4178|date=November 23, 1907|pages=645–646|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=__I_PcOFSw8C&pg=PA645}} see also an appreciative notice by J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship, iii. (1908).

The Archives and Special Collections at Amherst College holds a collection of Jebb's papers.

Notes

References

{{EB1911 |wstitle=Jebb, Sir Richard Claverhouse |volume=15 |page=299}}
{{NIE}}

External links

{{Commonscatinline}}
{{wikisource author-inline}}
[https://archivesspace.amherst.edu/repositories/2/resources/194 Richard Claverhouse Jebb Papers] at the Amherst College Archives & Special Collections
{{Internet Archive author |sname=Richard Claverhouse Jebb}}
{{Librivox author |id=11515}}
{{Find a Grave|5935490}}
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110606090257/http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/directory/archive.asp?fellowsID=1725 British Academy Fellowship entry]
[http://www.trinitycollegechapel.com/about/memorials/brasses/jebb/ Trinity College Chapel]

{{succession box

| title = Member of Parliament for Cambridge University

| years = 1891–1906

| with = Sir George Stokes to 1892

| with2 = Sir John Eldon Gorst from 1892

| before = Henry Cecil Raikes
Sir George Stokes

| after = Samuel Butcher
John Rawlinson

}}

{{Succession box|title=Regius Professor of Greek Cambridge University|years=1889–1905|before=Benjamin Hall Kennedy|after=Henry Jackson}}

Category:1841 births

Category:1905 deaths

Category:People from Dundee