Richard Claverhouse Jebb

Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (27 August 1841 – 9 December 1905) was a British classical scholar and MP for Cambridge.

Life "Ajax MP". Caricature by Spy 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.

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 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.

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. In 1904, he was elected a member to the American Philosophical Society. In 1905, he was made a member of the Order of Merit.

Jebb died at his home, Springfield House 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. Caroline Jebb died and was cremated in America, her ashes being returned to Cambridge for interment in her husband's grave.

Works

Jebb was a highly accomplished classical scholar, a humanist, and a notable translator from and into the classical languages. His translations of Sophocles are still read. For a balanced assessment of Jebb as scholar and translator, see David D. Dawes' Rutgers-New Brunswick article, 'Jebb, Richard Claverhouse'. Jebb's publications include: The Characters of Theophrastus (1870), text, introduction, English translation and commentary (re-edited by JE Sandys, 1909) ''Translations into Greek and Latin, appeared in 1873 (ed. 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 (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).

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