Identity area
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Title
Date(s)
- 8 Oct. 1923 (Creation)
- 1877 (Creation)
Level of description
Extent and medium
1 vol., c. 294 x 235 mm. Letter (2 single sheets) tipped in; essay bound in, foliated [1]-61. 4 blank ff,. at front of vol., 1 between letter and essay, 3 at end.
1 small card inside front cover
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
During his short life William Kingdon Clifford made significant contributions to various areas of mathematics, especially geometry, and through his many public lectures and writings he was a prominent participant in the intellectual debates of his age, particularly as a supporter and populariser of scientific thinking and as an opponent of religious dogma. He was born at Exeter in 1845, the son of a bookseller, and educated at King’s College, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was elected to a fellowship in 1868. In 1870 he travelled to the Mediterranean with an expedition from the Royal Astronomical Society to view a solar eclipse, and the next year he exchanged his fellowship for the chair of applied mathematics at University College, London. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1874. In 1875 he married Lucy Lane, later a writer, with whom he had two daughters, but in 1876 he experienced the first symptoms of the lung disease which was to trouble the remainder of his life. Attempts were made to restore his health by foreign travel, but these were of only temporary effect, and he died at Madeira in 1879, aged just thirty-three.
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Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Sent to the Master of Trinity, J. J. Thomson, by Clifford's widow Lucy in Oct. 1923
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'W. K. Clifford' stamped in gold on front cover, with a small oval containing the words 'Trin. Coll. Camb.' at the foot. Stamped 'John P. Gray & Son Ltd', the binders, at the top of the inside front cover; bookplate giving provenance pasted below.
Letter, 8 Oct. 1923, from Lucy Clifford to J. J. Thomson tipped in at front, on headed notepaper for 7 Chilworth Street, W.2. Sir Frederick Pollock thinks Trinity 'would care to possess this MS'; she would be very proud if this were the case, and believes her husband would have been too. Believes it was written in 1877 and published in the Fortnightly Review [in fact, it appeared in the Oct. 1977 of the Nineteenth Century; it later appeared in the collected works edited by Pollock and Leslie Stephen. This is the 'first & only copy'. Describes her husband's usual habits when writing a paper, working through the night with a few breaks to exercise with 'the Indian clubs' and always finishing 'at the last possible moment for publication'. Wishes 'his other MSS. had been saved; but I have no knowledge of them, & even his autograph is very scare owing to the fact that he seldom signed it in full. Hopes Thomson remembers their meeting last year at a dinner given by Mrs Roy Batty [Thomson's sister in law] before a Royal Institution Lecture, and their discussion of Mrs Oliphant's novels.
'XIXth Century' written in blue crayon on first sheet of the essay, perhaps relating to Pollock & Stephen's edition of Clifford's papers, published in 1879; 'R. Young' written in pencil at the top right. 'One of W. K. Clifford's MSS' written in pencil on the back of f. 2. Clifford's name and address (26 Colville Road, Bayswater) on the back of the last sheet.
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Related units of description
CLIFF: Papers of W. K. Clifford, including correspondence, manuscript drafts, proofs and offprints.
Add. MS c 93/73: Letter, 25 Nov. 1977, in which he discusses Sidgwick's use of the phrase 'cosmic emotion' at breakfast in his rooms 'some time before /71'.
Publication note
First published in The Nineteenth Century vol. 2, pp. 411-445 (Oct. 1877); republished in Clifford, W. K., Pollock, F., & Stephen, L. (1879). Lectures and essays by the late William Kingdon Clifford, vol 2. Macmillan.
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Place access points
Name access points
- Clifford, Sophia Lucy Jane (1846-1929), writer (Subject)
- Thomson, Sir Joseph John (1856-1940), knight, physicist (Subject)
- Pollock, Sir Frederick (1845-1937), 3rd Baronet, jurist (Subject)
- Batty, Violet Emma Roy (1860-1924), wife of Charles Smart Roy (Subject)
- Oliphant, Margaret Oliphant Wilson (1828-1897) novelist and biographer (Subject)