Caroline Robbins or Caroline Herben (18 August 1903 – 8 February 1999) was a British historian who was a professor at

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United Sta ...

Life

Robbins was born in

Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in neighbourin ...

in 1903.

J. R. Pole Jack Richon Pole, FBA, FRHistS (14 March 1922 – 30 January 2010) was a British historian of the United States. After holding posts at University College, London and the University of Cambridge, he was Rhodes Professor of American History and ...

, ‘Robbins , Caroline (1903–1999)’, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 8 Sept 2015
/ref> Her parents were Rowland Richard (1872–1960) and Rosa Marion Robbins (''nee'' Harris). Her father was a farmer and he was a Councillor on the

Middlesex County Council Middlesex County Council was the principal local government body in the administrative county of Middlesex from 1889 to 1965. The county council was created by the Local Government Act 1888, which also removed the most populous part of the coun ...

. Her brother, Lionel, would become an economist.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
/ref> She took her doctorate at

London University The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degr ...

with a treatise on

Andrew Marvell Andrew Marvell (; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet, satirist and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. During the Commonwealth period he was a colleague and friend ...

. Robbins became an instructor in British history at

in 1929. She served in that department for 42 years. She wrote ''The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman'' in 1959. She married

Stephen J. Herben Jr. Stephen Joseph Herben Jr. (14 March 1897 – 22 December 1967) was an American professor of philology at Bryn Mawr College. He specialized in English and German philology, and among other places did work at the American-Scandinavian Foundation i ...

, who was also a professor at Bryn Mawr, in 1932. Robbins died in

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania The Village of Valley Forge is an unincorporated settlement located on the west side of Valley Forge National Historical Park at the confluence of Valley Creek and the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania. The remaining village is in Schuylkill To ...

in 1999. After she died a professorship was founded in her name.

Works

* ''The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman: Studies in the Transmission, Development and Circumstances of English Liberal Thought from the Restoration of Charles II until the War with the Thirteen Colonies''. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA 1959. * ''Two English Republican Tracts''. Cambridge University Press, 1969. * ''Barbara Taft: Absolute Liberty: A Selection from the Articles and Papers of Caroline Robbins''. Archon Books, Hamden CN 1982.

References

1903 births 1999 deaths People from Middlesex 20th-century British historians British women historians Herben family 20th-century British women writers British emigrants to the United States {{UK-historian-stub