Garnett, Richard

(1835-1906)

   Soon after his birth, at Lichfield, Staffordshire, his father became assistant keeper of printed books at the British Museum in London. At the age of sixteen Richard became an assistant in the library of the British Museum, and eventually became chief keeper of the museum. He received an honorary LL.D. degree from Edinburgh in 1833 and was made commander of the Bath in 1895. His literary works include numerous translations from the Greek, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese; several books of verse; the book of short stories The Twilight of the Gods (1888); biographies of Carlyle, Milton, Blake, and others; The Age of Dryden (1895); a History of Italian Literature; and many articles for encyclopedias and the Dictionary of National Biography. Some of his other publications: Primula, a Book of Lyrics, 1858. Poems From the German, 1862. Idylls and Epigrams, Chiefly From the Greek Antholog y, 1869. Iphigenia in Delphi, 1891. One Hundred and Twenty-four Sonnets from Dante, Petrarch, and Camoens, 1896. The Queen and Other Poems, 1901. Some of his poems: "Bismarck and Moltke," "Io in Egypt," "Memorial Verses," "On Revisiting Lichfield Cathedral," "To America."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Poems of Richard Garnett. Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1893. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).