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William Upcott
William Upcott (1779–1845) was an English librarian and antiquary. Life Born in Oxfordshire, he was the illegitimate son of Ozias Humphry by Delly Wickens, daughter of an Oxford shopkeeper, called Upcott from the maiden name of Humphry's mother. His father bequeathed to him his miniatures, pictures, drawings, and engravings, as well as correspondence with many leading figures. Upcott was initially a bookseller, at first an assistant of Robert Harding Evans of Pall Mall, and then of John Wright of Piccadilly. While at Wright's shop he attracted the attention of John Ireland, William Gifford, and the writers of the '' Anti-Jacobin'' who met there, and he witnessed the scuffle there between Gifford and John Wolcot, helping to eject Wolcot. When Richard Porson was made librarian of the London Institution, Upcott was appointed as his assistant (23 April 1806), and he continued in the same position under William Maltby. On 30 May 1834 he resigned his office. Upcott spent the rest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Upcott
William Upcott (1779–1845) was an English librarian and antiquary. Life Born in Oxfordshire, he was the illegitimate son of Ozias Humphry by Delly Wickens, daughter of an Oxford shopkeeper, called Upcott from the maiden name of Humphry's mother. His father bequeathed to him his miniatures, pictures, drawings, and engravings, as well as correspondence with many leading figures. Upcott was initially a bookseller, at first an assistant of Robert Harding Evans of Pall Mall, and then of John Wright of Piccadilly. While at Wright's shop he attracted the attention of John Ireland, William Gifford, and the writers of the '' Anti-Jacobin'' who met there, and he witnessed the scuffle there between Gifford and John Wolcot, helping to eject Wolcot. When Richard Porson was made librarian of the London Institution, Upcott was appointed as his assistant (23 April 1806), and he continued in the same position under William Maltby. On 30 May 1834 he resigned his office. Upcott spent the rest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his " prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God" or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he is held in high regard b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Thoresby
Ralph Thoresby (16 August 1658 – 16 October 1725) was an antiquarian, who was born in Leeds and is widely credited with being the first historian of that city. Besides being a merchant, he was a nonconformist, fellow of the Royal Society, diarist, author, common-councilman in the Corporation of Leeds, and museum keeper. Early life Ralph Thoresby was the son of John Thoresby, a Leeds merchant who for a time was an officer under Fairfax during the English Civil War, and was by inclination an antiquarian; and of his wife Ruth (b. Ruth Idle, from Bulmer, near York). According to the preface of ''The Diary of Ralph Thoresby F.R.S.'', father and son were alike, deeply religious and both with strong attachments to antiquarian pursuits. John Thoresby established for himself a museum of coins and medals, purchasing at great expense two pre-existing collections owned by the Fairfax family and another family called Stonehouse. Ralph was educated at Leeds Grammar School, and on the de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Rodd
Thomas Rodd (1763–1822) was an English bookseller, antiquarian and Hispanist; Rodd purchased some Greek manuscripts for the British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ... (e.g. codices: Minuscule 272, Minuscule 498). He translated some old ballads into English: ''Ancient Ballads from the Civil Wars of Granada and the Twelve Peers of France'' (London, 1801). He also translated part 1 of a Spanish historical novel by Gines Perez de Hita as ''The Civil Wars of Granada'' (London, 1803). Then he published an adaptation of the '' Historia Caroli Magni'': ''History of Charles the Great and Orlando, ascribed to Archbishop Turpin; translated from the Latin in Spanheim’s Lives of ecclesiastical writers: together with English metrical versions of the most celebrated anc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Shenstone
William Shenstone (18 November 171411 February 1763) was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, ''The Leasowes''. Biography Son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Penn, daughter of William Penn of Harborough Hall, then in Hagley (now Blakedown), Shenstone was born at the Leasowes, Halesowen on 18 November 1714. At that time this was an exclave of Shropshire within the county of Worcestershire and now in the West Midlands. Shenstone received part of his formal education at Halesowen Grammar School (now The Earls High School). In 1741, Shenstone became bailiff to the feoffees of Halesowen Grammar School. While attending Solihull School, he began a lifelong friendship with Richard Jago. He went up to Pembroke College, Oxford in 1732 and made another firm friend there in Richard Graves, the author of ''The Spiritual Quixote''. Shenstone took no degree, but, while still at Oxford, he published ''Poems on va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Weller Singer
Samuel Weller Singer (1783–1858) was an English author and scholar on the work of William Shakespeare. He is also now remembered as a pioneer historian of card games. Life Born in London, he was son of Thomas Singer, a feather and artificial-flower maker, who carried on business in Princes Street, Cavendish Square. George John Singer was his younger brother. His father died when Samuel was ten years old, and his mother, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Weller, continued the feather and flower business. Samuel attended a day school kept by a Frenchwoman, and acquired facility in French. As a boy he read widely, and taught himself Italian. At an early age he was apprenticed to a hatter, but the indentures were cancelled. His mother then employed him, and about 1808 he set up for himself in the same trade in Duke Street, St. James's, though without success. He then opened a bookseller's shop in St. James's Street: collectors such as Heber, Grenville, and Francis Douce were among h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Burton (MP For Westmorland)
Thomas Burton (died 1661), of Brampton Hall, Westmorland, was an English politician, the Member of Parliament for Westmorland from 1656 to 1659, now known as a parliamentary diarist. Life He was a justice of the peace for Westmorland. He was returned to parliament as member for the county on 20 August 1656. On 16 October 1656 he was called upon by the parliament to answer a charge of disaffection towards the existing government, which he did to the satisfaction of the house. Burton was re-elected for Westmorland to Richard Cromwell's parliament, which met on 27 January 1659 and was dissolved on 22 April 1659. He did not sit in parliament after the Restoration of 1660. Although he spoke rarely, he is assumed to have been a regular attender in the House of Commons. Diary Burton has been identified as the author of a diary of parliamentary proceedings from 1656 to 1659. The authorship was in dispute during the nineteenth century, as reported by Sidney Lee in the ''Dictionary of Na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The British Library is a major research library, with items in many languages and in many formats, both print and digital: books, manuscripts, journals, newspapers, magazines, sound and music recordings, videos, play-scripts, patents, databases, maps, stamps, prints, drawings. The Library's collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial holdings of manuscripts and items dating as far back as 2000 BC. The library maintains a programme for content acquis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present.Among the national museums in London, sculpture and decorative and applied art are in the Victoria and Albert Museum; the British Museum houses earlier art, non-Western art, prints and drawings. The National Gallery holds the national collection of Western European art to about 1900, while art of the 20th century on is at Tate Modern. Tate Britain holds British Art from 1500 onwards. Books, manuscripts and many works on paper are in the British Library. There are significant overlaps between the coverage of the various collections. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. The museum was established in 1753, largely b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles John Smith
Charles John Smith (1803–1838) was an English engraver. Life He was born in 1803 at Chelsea where his father, James Smith, practised as a surgeon. He was a pupil of Charles Pye, and became an engraver of book illustrations of a topographical and antiquarian character. He was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1837, and died of paralysis in Albany Street, London, on 23 November 1838. Works He executed a few of the later plates in Charles Stothard's ''Monumental Effigies'', the views of houses and monuments in Edmund Cartwright's ''Rape of Bramber'', 1830, and plates from illuminated manuscripts for Thomas Frognall Dibdin's ''Tour in the Northern Counties of England'', 1838. In 1829 Smith published a series of ''Autographs of Royal, Noble, and Illustrious Persons'', with memoirs by John Gough Nichols John Gough Nichols (1806–1873) was an English painter and antiquary, the third generation in a family publishing business with strong connection to learned ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of the second half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and easy strokes. Despite being a prolific portrait painter, Gainsborough gained greater satisfaction from his landscapes. He is credited (with Richard Wilson) as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a founding member of the Royal Academy. Youth and training He was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woollen goods, and his wife Mary, the sister of the Reverend Humphry Burroughs. One of Gainsborough's brothers, Humphrey, had a faculty for mechanics and was said to have invented the method of condensing steam in a separate ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guildhall Library
The Guildhall Library is a public reference library specialising in subjects relevant to London. It is administered by the Corporation of London, the government of the City of London, which is the historical heart of London, England. The library was founded in the 1420s under the terms of the will of Lord Mayor Dick Whittington. Many volumes in store rooms were lost due to bombing in World War Two. The library was originally housed in the Old Library at the Guildhall, and moved to modern premises elsewhere in the Guildhall complex in the 1970s. Services The library is a public reference library and specialises in subjects relevant to London. The collection has its greatest depth on topics specifically concerned with the City, but also contains a great deal of material on the other parts of metropolitan London. It is divided into three main sections: printed books; manuscripts; and prints, maps and drawings. The material dates from the eleventh century onwards. Notable librari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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