Key Information
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- [1845-1848] (Creation)
Level of description
Collection
Extent
1 volume
Scope and content
Bound volume containing manuscript letters, mostly undated, from Eliot Warburton to Arabella Sarah Colston (1822-1891) written mainly when he was in Ireland, on subjects including: poverty, emigration and mortality in Ireland due to the Great Famine; friends and family, including the death of his father George Warburton, 1845; Warburton’s perceived lack of success as a writer and doubts over the merits of his own writings, 1846; criticism of the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), with transcription of an extract from the poet’s Hyperion, 1846; Warburton’s eagerness to travel again once his book commitments are out of the way, June 1846; book and periodical recommendations for Arabella; cloth samples; fundraising for the Irish poor, notably through his publication Zoe: an Episode in the Greek War (1847) and donations of money from Arabella, 1847. Volume also contains four typescript pages of biographical information on Warburton and Colston.
General Information
Name of creator
Biographical history
Born 1810 in Tullamore, King’s county, Ireland; educated by private tutor at Wakefield, Yorkshire; admitted as undergraduate to Queen’s College, Cambridge, 1828; transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge, 1830; gained BA, 1834, MA, 1837; entered to study law at Inner Temple, 1832; admitted King's Inn, Dublin, 1833; called to Irish bar in 1837, but abandoned law to manage his Irish estates, travel, and write, under the pseudonym Eliot Warburton; travelled extensively through Syria, Palestine and Egypt, 1843; accounts of travels published as series of articles entitled ‘Episodes of Eastern Travel’ in The Dublin University Magazine, 1843-1844; collected articles on Near East travels published as The Crescent and the Cross, or, Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel, 1845; Zoe: an Episode in the Greek War published in aid of the Irish poor, 1847; Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers published, 1849; published novel Reginald Hastings, 1850; edited Memoirs of Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries, 1851; appointed by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to negotiate a treaty with the native Indian peoples over the strategic geographical area of Isthmus of Darien [now Isthmus of Panama], 1851; died on voyage to South America when Royal Mail steamship Amazon caught fire, 1852; Darien, or, The Merchant Prince posthumously published, 1852.
Publications: The Crescent and the Cross, or, Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel (London, 1845); Zoe: an Episode in the Greek War 1847; Hochelaga or England in the New World by George Warburton, edited by Eliot Warburton (London,1846); Memoirs of prince Rupert and the Cavaliers including their private correspondence (London, 1849); Reginald Hastings; or, A tale of the troubles in 164- (London, 1850); Memoirs of Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries, by Robert Folkestone Williams, edited by Eliot Warburton (London, 1851); Darien, or, The Merchant Prince (London, 1852).
Repository
Archival history
Acquired by Frederick Stroud Read in 1936, given to King’s College London by his wife in 1947, where it was housed in the Modern Greek Library, King’s College Library, until its transfer to King’s College Archives.
Custodial history
Transferred from King’s College Library.
Conditions governing access
Open, subject to signature of Reader's undertaking form, and appropriate provision of two forms of identification, to include one photographic ID.
Conditions governing reproduction
Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied from open material for research purposes only.
Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Archives.
Language of material
Script of material
Finding aids
This collection level description.
Alternative identifier(s)
Subjects
Place access points
People and Organisations
Genre access points
Rules and/or conventions used
Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000.
Script(s)
Archivist's note
Sources: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography;
Description compiled by Caroline Lam, 2007.