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Leslie Stephen

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Nationality
  
English

Parents
  
James Stephen

Role
  
Author

Name
  
Leslie Stephen

Period
  
Victorian era


Leslie Stephen Leslie Stephen and his daughter Virginia Woolf 1902

Born
  
28 November 1832Kensington Gore, London (
1832-11-28
)

Died
  
February 22, 1904, Kensington, London, United Kingdom

Spouse
  
Children
  
Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell

Books
  
Hours In A Library (4 Volumes), playground of Europe, The English Utilitarians, An agnostic's apology, Sir Leslie Stephen's Mausoleu

Similar People
  
Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Thoby Stephen, George Herbert Duckworth

Leslie Stephen


Sir Leslie Stephen (28 November 1832 – 22 February 1904) was an English author, critic, historian, biographer, and mountaineer, and father of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.

Contents

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Life

Leslie Stephen Leslie Stephen plate 25 Smith College Libraries

Stephen was born at Kensington Gore in London, and son of Sir James Stephen and (Lady) Jane Catherine (née Venn) Stephen. His father was Colonial Undersecretary of State and a noted abolitionist. He was the fourth of five children, his siblings including James Fitzjames Stephen (1829–1894) and Caroline Emilia Stephen (1834–1909).

Leslie Stephen indexjpg

His family had belonged to the Clapham Sect, the early 19th century group of mainly evangelical Christian social reformers. At his father's house he saw a good deal of the Macaulays, James Spedding, Sir Henry Taylor and Nassau Senior. After studying at Eton College, King's College London and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. (20th wrangler) in 1854 and M.A. in 1857, Stephen remained for several years a fellow and tutor of his college. He recounted some of his experiences in a chapter in his Life of Fawcett as well as in some less formal Sketches from Cambridge: By a Don (1865). These sketches were reprinted from the Pall Mall Gazette, to the proprietor of which, George Murray Smith, he had been introduced by his brother.

(1) Harriet (Minny) Thackeray 1867–1875

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The family connections included that of William Makepeace Thackeray. His brother, Fitzjames had been a friend of Thackeray's and assisted in the disposition of his estate when he died in 1863. His sister Caroline met Thackeray's daughters, Anny (1837–1919) and Minny (Harriet Marian Thackeray 1840–1875) when they were mutual guests of Julia Margaret Cameron (of whom, see later). This led to an invitation to visit from Leslie Stephen's mother, Lady Stephen, where the sisters met him. They also met at George Murray Smith's house at Hampstead. Minny and Leslie became engaged on December 4, 1866 and married on June 19, 1867. After the wedding they travelled to the Swiss Alps and northern Italy, and on return to England lived at the Thackeray sister's home at 16 Onslow Gardens with Anny, who was a novelist. In the spring of 1868 Minny miscarried but recovered sufficiently for the couple to tour the eastern United States. Minny miscarried again in 1869, but became pregnant again in 1870 and on December 7 gave birth to their daughter, Laura Makepeace Stephen (1870–1945). Laura was premature, weighing three pounds. In March 1873 Thackeray and the Stephens moved to 8 Southwell Gardens. The couple travelled extensively, and by 1875 Minny was pregnant again, but this time was in poor health. On November 27 she developed convulsions, and died the following day of eclampsia.

After Minny's death, Leslie Stephen continued to live with Anny, but they moved to 11 Hyde Park gate South in 1876, next door to her widowed friend and collaborator, Julia Duckworth. Leslie Stephen and his daughter were also cared for by his sister, the writer Caroline Emelia Stephen, although Leslie described her as "Silly Milly" and her books as "little works". Meanwhile, Anny was falling in love with her younger cousin Richmond Ritchie, to Leslie Stephen's consternation. Ritchie became a constant visitor and they became engaged in May 1877, and were married on August 2. At the same time Leslie Stephen was seeing more and more of Julia Duckworth.

(2) Julia Duckworth 1878–1895

His second marriage was to Julia Prinsep Duckworth (née Jackson, 1846–1895). Julia had been born in India and after returning to England she became a model for Pre-Raphaelite painters such as Edward Burne-Jones. In 1867 she had married Herbert Duckworth (1833 − 1870) by whom she had three children prior to his death in 1870.

Leslie Stephen and Julia Duckworth were married on March 26, 1878. They had four children:

  • Vanessa (1879–1961) married Clive Bell
  • Thoby (1880–1906)
  • Virginia (1882–1941) married Leonard Woolf
  • Adrian (1883–1948)
  • In May 1895, Julia died of influenza, leaving her husband with four young children aged 11 to 15 (her children by her first marriage being adult by then).

    Career

    In the 1850s, Stephen and his brother James Fitzjames Stephen were invited by Frederick Denison Maurice to lecture at The Working Men's College. Leslie Stephen became a member of the College's governing College Corporation.

    Stephen was an Honorary Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and received the honorary degree Doctor of Letters (D. Litt.) from the University of Cambridge and from the University of Oxford (November 1901). While at Cambridge, Stephen became an Anglican clergyman. In 1865, having renounced his religious beliefs, and after a visit to the United States two years earlier, where he had formed lasting friendships with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., James Russell Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton, he settled in London and became a journalist, eventually editing the Cornhill Magazine in 1871 where R. L. Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, W. E. Norris, Henry James, and James Payn figured among his contributors.

    In his spare time, he participated in athletics and mountaineering. He also contributed to the Saturday Review, Fraser, Macmillan, the Fortnightly, and other periodicals. He was already known as a climber, as a contributor to Peaks, Passes and Glaciers (1862), and as one of the earliest presidents of the Alpine Club, when, in 1871, in commemoration of his own first ascents in the Alps, he published The Playground of Europe, which immediately became a mountaineering classic, drawing—together with Whymper's Scrambles Amongst the Alps—successive generations of its readers to the Alps.

    During the eleven years of his editorship, in addition to three volumes of critical studies, he made two valuable contributions to philosophical history and theory. The first was The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (1876 and 1881). This work was generally recognised as an important addition to philosophical literature and led immediately to Stephen's election at the Athenaeum Club in 1877. The second was The Science of Ethics (1882). It was extensively adopted as a textbook on the subject and made him the best-known proponent of evolutionary ethics in late-nineteenth-century Britain. He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1901.

    Stephen also served as the first editor (1885–91) of the Dictionary of National Biography.

    Mountaineering

    Stephen was one of the most prominent figures in the golden age of alpinism (the period between Wills's ascent of the Wetterhorn in 1854 and Whymper's ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865) during which many major alpine peaks saw their first ascents. Joining the Alpine Club in 1857 (the year of its formation), Stephen made the first ascent, usually in the company of his favourite Swiss guide Melchior Anderegg, of the following peaks:

  • Wildstrubel – 11 September 1858 with T. W. Hinchliff and Melchior Anderegg
  • Bietschhorn – 13 August 1859 with Anton Siegen, Johann Siegen and Joseph Ebener
  • Rimpfischhorn – 9 September 1859 with Robert Living, Melchior Anderegg and Johann Zumtaugwald
  • Alphubel – 9 August 1860 with T. W. Hinchliff, Melchior Anderegg and Peter Perren
  • Blüemlisalphorn – 27 August 1860 with Robert Living, Melchior Anderegg, F. Ogi, P. Simond and J. K. Stone
  • Schreckhorn – 16 August 1861 with Ulrich Kaufmann, Christian Michel and Peter Michel
  • Monte Disgrazia – 23 August 1862 with E. S. Kennedy, Thomas Cox and Melchior Anderegg
  • Zinalrothorn – 22 August 1864 with Florence Crauford Grove, Jakob Anderegg and Melchior Anderegg
  • Mont Mallet – 4 September 1871 with G. Loppe, F. A. Wallroth, Melchior Anderegg, Ch. and A. Tournier
  • He was President of the Alpine Club from 1865–68.

    Works

  • The Poll Degree from a Third Point of View (1863).
  • The "Times" on the American War: A Historical Study (1865).
  • Sketches from Cambridge (1865).
  • The Playground of Europe (1871).
  • Essays on Free Thinking and Plain Speaking (1873).
  • Hours in a Library (3 vols., 1874–1879).
  • The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols., 1876).
  • Samuel Johnson (1878).
  • Swift (1882).
  • The Science of Ethics (1882).
  • Life of Henry Fawcett (1885).
  • An Agnostic's Apology and Other Essays (London: Smith, Elder and Company, 1893).
  • Sir Victor Brooke, Sportsman and Naturalist (1894).
  • The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. (1895).
  • Social Rights and Duties (1896).
  • Studies of a Biographer (4 volumes, 1898–1902).
  • The English Utilitarians (1900).
  • George Eliot (London: Macmillan, 1902).
  • English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century (Ford Lectures) (London: Duckworth and Company, 1903, 1904).
  • Hobbes (1904).
  • Death

    He died in Kensington. He is buried in the eastern section of Highgate Cemetery in the raised section alongside the northern path. His daughter, Virginia Woolf, was badly affected by his death and she was cared for by his sister, Caroline. Woolf in 1922 created a detailed psychological portrait of him in the fictional character of Mr. Ramsay in her classic novel, To the Lighthouse, (as well as of her mother as Mrs. Ramsay). (Ref: The Diaries and Letters of Virginia Woolf)

    For Family Trees of the Stephens, Thackerays and Jacksons, see Bicknell (1996) and Bloom and Maynard (1994).

    References

    Leslie Stephen Wikipedia


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