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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 the …show more content…

Briefly, the approximate number of letters for each year is: 1835: 2 letters 1838-41: Substantial letter-book (1838-41) containing about 20 long letters. 1839: 5 letters 1840: 17 letters 1841: 6 fetters 1842: a. Letter-book containing copies of 24 long letters from Jalalabad. b. Another letter-book containing about 12 transcriptions and original letters. c. Famous coded letter from General Pollock, dated 12 March, 1842, Peshawar. d. Six other letters. 1843-47: 4 letters. 1848: Letter-book with transcriptions of four long attached original letters. 1851-53: 2 letters. 1854: About 110 letters. 1855: 9 fetters. Note: Mutiny begins May l0th,1857. 1858: a. very fragile scrapbook containing about 70 original letters, and drafts to and from the private secretary to the Governor of Bombay on political matters. b. 2 letters. 1859: About 60 letters. There are also more letters in letter-books other than those mentioned above that I have not included in this chronological listing, making a total of about 400 letters altogether. Many of the various notebooks contain copies of letters - probably mostly copied in the latter part of the 19th Century - and these may or may not duplicate the originals. This cross-checking has yet to be done, as also checking the original letters or copies against the selection edited by Walter Firminger in Bengal: Past and Present in l910 [6: 297-317], or against the texts quoted in

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