Does anyone know anything about Richard John Cunliffe’s biography? I’m having trouble discovering anything about him beyond his publication list and the fact that he had a daughter, Mary Cunliffe.
Nothing in any of the dictionaries of classicists?
Apparently not. A librarian at Berkeley checked for me.
A google scholar search turns up nothing. I’d expect that one of the classical studies journals would have run an obituary for him.
just the blurb on the back of my copy:
It’s a κτημα ες αει.
Yes, the above blurb is almost all that I have got.
Here he is in 1904.
Application and testimonials of Richard John Cunliffe, M.A., LL.B., for Additional Examinership for Degrees in Arts and Law, in Jurisprudence, Public and Private International Law, and Constitutional Law and History.
In 1916 he applied for (but did not get) the Glasgow Chair of Conveyancing. His application was under the name “John Richard Cunliffe” and exists at GUL Sp Coll Mu21-a.3.
He published “A new Shakespearean dictionary” in 1910. And then Blackie’s Compact Etymological Dictionary in 1920. I think that this later on become Blackie’s Compact Dictionary of Current English" in the 1960s. The Homeric Lexicon was published in 1924. He published a supplement on Homeric Proper and Place Names in 1931.
Unfortunately I don’t know the date of his birth or death, except that it was before 1963 when his Lexicon was reprinted.
“translations being useless”
Here’s some plausible connections on Family Search, if not 100% certain of any of these.
birth 6 October 1863, in Glasgow. https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:VQQX-696
death 15 March 1931, in London. beneficiaries Mary Caroline Cunliffe (wife?) and Mary Helena Cunliffe (daughter?).https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7X8J-LKPZ
death
Mary Caroline Cunliffe died 26 Nov 1949 in London, with sole beneficiary Mary Helena Cunliffe. https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:7X8J-R72M
Mary Helena Cunliffe died 19 Mar 1975 in South Africa as a ‘spinster.’ https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:C9Q3-KV6Z.
It looks like the Cunliffe line is now dead. I’d like to find a photograph of the man, which I think is not impossible with a better genealogical database.
He was a Glaswegian lawyer with a lot of time on his hands.
Or else, as Dr. Casaubon did to Dorothea, he set the female members of his household grinding out the lexicographical projects published under his name.
Hmm. So who in his household knew Homeric Greek, I wonder?
But here’s an extract from a hilariously unwoke 2011 piece on Casaubon and Dorothea by Neil Ascherson:
“Casaubon, I suggest, was on his way to become one of the towering, universal geniuses of the 19th century - a giant to be ranked with Darwin and Marx - when he became entangled with Dorothea. Her silliness and interference, her pestering for attention, diverted his tremendous project into the sands.”
Take that, George Eliot!
The wife and spinster daughter, and perhaps an unmarried female cousin or two, would not have needed to know very much Homeric Greek — just enough to read the words and look up the forms, which they could easily manage with the domestic duties in the hands of the Irish staff.
Actually, the largest share of the mind-numbing, soul-crushing labor on which Cunliffe’s lexicon rests was probably performed by the female members of the households of Dunbar and Prendergast.
From the preface to his lexicon:
“My friend Mr. J. B. Douglas has very kindly gone over the work in proof, and has made many valuable suggestions. I owe and tender very grateful thanks to Mr. F. E. Webb, the printers’ scholarly proof-reader, for the great care which he has bestowed on the proofs and for suggestions which he has made, and bear willing testimony to his accuracy and his untiring assiduity in a laborious task. I must, however, accept myself the ultimate responsibility for any literals that may be found. The references have all been checked by me in proof with the text, and I hope that little inaccuracy will be found. I do not doubt that the work is open to criticism in detail. It could hardly, indeed, be otherwise in the case of a single-handed attempt to deal afresh with a vocabulary so copious and so complicated as that of the epics. I can truly say, however, that I have spared no pains, and have consciously shirked no difficulty, in the effort to make a useful book.”
Unless other evidence can be found, I see no reason not to take Cunliffe at his word regarding the work taken to produce his book.