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 ...
.
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 neighbour ...
in 1903.
[ J. R. Pole, ‘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 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 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 ...
in 1929. She served in that department for 42 years. She wrote ''The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman'' in 1959.[
She married Stephen J. Herben Jr., 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 Tow ...
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