Richard Claverhouse Jebb

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

Jebb was born in Dundee, Scotland. His father Robert was a well-known Irish barrister; his mother was Harriet Horsley. His grandfather Richard Jebb was 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; his niece, Eglantyne's daughter Eglantyne Jebb, co-founded the Save the Children Fund and wrote the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

Life

He was educated at St Columba's College, Dublin 1853–55 then Charterhouse School 1855–1858. He then studied Classics at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was a Member of the Cambridge Apostles, the intellectual secret society, from 1859. 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 Jebb 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 Caernarfon to receive the honorary degree DLitt (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 1904, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. In 1905 he was made a member of the Order of Merit.

Jebb 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 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 Cambridge.

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