Category Archives: Biography

Bourns

Posted on 18/08/2016 by carolinemmurray

The word ‘bourn’ has two main meanings: it is either a brook (cf. northern and Scots ‘burn’) or it is a destination, limit, or boundary (as in ‘… That undiscovered country, from whose bourn / No traveller returns’). As a … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, Cambridge, History | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Object of the Month: July

Posted on 29/07/2016 by carolinemmurray

I was planning to follow up on some thoughts generated by a recent interesting talk at the Fitzwilliam Museum about portraits of men with their secretaries/assistants/friends, but I got diverted quite early on to a rather different topic. The Museum … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, Cambridge, History, Museums and Galleries | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Dream of Gerontius

Posted on 15/06/2016 by carolinemmurray

I tend to fight shy of opining about music, since it’s an area where I feel even more fraudulently incompetent than usual, but I am going to make an exception for the wonderful concert I attended last Saturday.

Posted in Biography, Music | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

OK, So Who Did Kill Cock Robin?

Posted on 05/06/2016 by carolinemmurray

A few weeks ago, my friend and (sadly ex-)colleague @elleccollins tweeted a picture of the remarkable Victorian editor, controversialist and Shakespeare scholar James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps thumbing his nose at ‘the idiots who ask me to resume literary studies’. He could … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Bibliography, Biography, History, Literature, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Object of the Month: April

Posted on 21/04/2016 by carolinemmurray

This enormous jug was made at the Coalport factory in Coalbrookdale, Ironbridge Gorge, which is usually thought of as the cradle of the Industrial Revolution. It was acquired for the Fitzwilliam Museum by the Friends in 2014, at a sale … Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, Cambridge, History, Museums and Galleries, Natural history | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Arsenic in the Arctic

Posted on 18/04/2016 by carolinemmurray

It is perhaps surprising that one of the best known U.S. Arctic explorers first felt the Call of the North in land-locked Cincinnati, Ohio. Charles Francis Hall (1821–71) was born in Vermont, and apprenticed to a blacksmith in Rochester, New … Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, Exploration | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Maria Dundas/Graham/Callcott

Posted on 07/04/2016 by carolinemmurray

Maria Dundas, later Graham, later Callcott, is another of the cohort of women (Fry, Coutts, Nightingale, Marcet, Caroline Herschel …) who give the lie to the nineteenth-century cliché about the angel in the house. Born on 19 July 1785 near … Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, History, Literature, Museums and Galleries, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

St Lubbock And His Pet Wasp

Posted on 03/04/2016 by carolinemmurray

A mostly self-taught polymath who knew everyone there was to known for two-thirds of the nineteenth century, banker, philanthropist, Member of Parliament, archaeologist, anthropologist, entomologist, geologist, best-selling author, slight eccentric (see pet wasp, and teaching poodle to read, below) and … Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Biography, History, Natural history | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments