Munby, Arthur Joseph

(1828-1910)

   Born in Clifton, North Yorkshire, where his father was a solicitor, he graduated M.A. from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1856. Called to the bar in 1855, from 1858 he held a post in the ecclesiastical commissioners' office until he retired in 1888. He supported the London Working Men's College, where he taught Latin for three years. He died and was buried at Pyrford, near Ripley, Surrey. When his will was read, it came to light that in 1873 he had married his servant, Hannah Cullwick, who had died the previous year. He bequeathed many of his books to Trinity College, Cambridge, and to the British Museum two deed boxes containing photographs, manuscripts, diaries and other documents on the condition they were not to be opened or examined before 1 January 1950. Some of his publications: Benoni, 1852. Elegiacs Dorothy, 1859. Verses New and Old, 1865. Vestigia Retrorsum, 1891. Susan, 1893. Ann Morgan's Love, 1896. Poems, 1901. Relicta, 1909. Some of his poems: "Bethesda," "Doris: A Pastoral," "In Retirement," "Magdalen," "The Milkwoman," "Then and Now-The North Downs," "When Autumn Returns."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Munby: Man of Two Words, Derek Hudson. John Murray, 1972. Poems, Chiefly Lyric and Elegiac of Arthur Munby. Kegan Paul, 1901. Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). 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 Faber Book of Poems and Places. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Faber and Faber, 1980. The Home Book of Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. Working Women in Victorian Britain, 1850-1910: The Diaries and Letters of Arthur J. Munby (1828-1910) and Hannah Cullwick (1833-1909) from Trinity College, Cambridge. Marlborough, Wiltshire: Adam Matthew Publications, 1993. 32 reels (http://www.library.utoronto.ca/robarts/microtext/collection/pages/workwomn.html).