| Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb | |
| Constituency Mp: | Cambridge University |
| Parliament: | United Kingdom |
| Term Start: | 1891 |
| Term End: | 1905 |
| Birth Date: | 1841 8, df=y |
| Birth Place: | Dundee, Scotland |
| Death Place: | Springfield House, Cambridge, England |
| Resting Place: | St Giles Cemetery, Cambridge, England |
| Party: | Conservative |
Sir Richard Claverhouse Jebb (27 August 1841 – 9 December 1905) was a British classical scholar and MP for Cambridge.
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.[1]
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.[2]
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.[3] In 1904, he was elected a member to the American Philosophical Society.[4] In 1905, he was made a member of the Order of Merit.
Jebb died at his home, Springfield House[5] 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.[6] Caroline Jebb died and was cremated in America, her ashes being returned to Cambridge for interment in her husband's grave.
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).
Jebb's publications include:
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,[8] 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;[9] 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.