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Sir Richmond Campbell Shakespear (1812-1861): His Life and Papers

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Note by Dr. Omar Shakespear Pound of Princeton University who during two visits to London (1988 and 1990) gave freely of his valuable time to the classification and filing of the Society's Shakespear papers.

SIR RICHMOND CAMPBELL SHAKESPEAR was born in India on 11 May, 1812. His father was John Talbot Shakespear (1783-1825) of the Bengal Civil Service; his mother, Emily Thackeray, eldest daughter of William Makepeace Thackeray, also of the B.C.S. and father of the novelist. The Shakespears had a long tradition of military and civil service in India, Afghanistan, Burma, and later in Kuwait where Captain W.H.I. Shakespear was Political Agent until his death in 1915. originally they came from a family of ropemakers in Shadwell, east of …show more content…

He also served in the second Sikh War, and was at the battle of Chilianwala. Intermittently he was seconded as a political officer in various parts of India, ending his life as Agent to the Governor-General for Central India in Indore, where he died in 1861. His career is described in a five column entry in the Dictionary of National Biography.

A few years ago I learned that the Society had a substantial cache of papers relating to Sir Richmond Shakespear, inherited from the Palestine Exploration Fund some time in the past. The collection is a very mixed bag indeed, including personal letters, official documents, letter-books and journals. It includes original letters from General Pollock, Dalhousie and Elphinstone, with copies of Sir Richmond's replies, often in the typical 19th century letter-books; original documents in both English and Russian relating to the release of the Russian prisoners from Khiva; and an extensive diary by Emily (Thackeray) Shakespear, Richmond's mother, of a trip with Lord Moira "up-country" in India in 1814 (extracts were published in Bengal: Past and Present in 1910 [6: 133-145]). The mission to Khiva and thence to St. Petersburg is well documented with family letters and official lists of prisoners (in both Russian and English), giving the age of each, and where captured.

Sometime after the papers were received from the Palestine Exploration Fund

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