Author: Milnes, Richard Monckton
Biography:
MILNES, Richard Monckton (1809-85: ODNB)
Although Milnes published a substantial amount of poetry in the decade 1834-44 he wrote little of it afterwards. He is best known as a public figure for his political work, and in literary circles for his edition in two volumes of the Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848). He was born in London on 19 June 1809, the son of Robert Pemberton Milnes, MP (1784-1858), and his wife Henrietta Maria Monckton (d 1847). He went to Trinity College, Cambridge (matric. 1827, MA 1831), where he overlapped with Hallam and Tennyson (qq.v.) as early members of the secret society of Apostles. After leaving Cambridge, Milnes travelled extensively, studied at London University and at Bonn, and published accounts of his journeys. From 1837 to 1863, when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Houghton, he served as MP for Pontefract, West Yorkshire—not far from the family seat of Fryston Hall. A cheerful and gregarious man, Milnes was a liberal reformer known for his efforts to reconcile opposing interests in areas as disparate as religion and foreign policy. He was also a popular host who held breakfast parties in London and entertained freely at Fryston, and a frequent contributor of essays to major reviews such as ER. On 31 July 1851 he married Annabella Hungerford Crewe (1814-74), daughter of the second Baron Crewe; they had four children, one of them stillborn. Among the honours that came his way were an FRS and FSA, honorary degrees from Oxford (1855) and Edinburgh (1878), a Cambridge fellowship (1876), a trusteeship at the British Museum, and presidency of the London Library 1882-5. He died at Vichy, France, on 10 Aug. 1885 and was buried at Fryston. He accumulated a very large collection of books and manuscripts reflecting his extraordinarily wide interests (literature, geography, history, religion, politics, criminology, pornography) and although it suffered damage by fire in 1876, much of it survived to be bequeathed to Trinity College by his descendants in 2016 and is now preserved as the Crewe Collection in the Wren Library. (ODNB 232 June 2023; “Crewe Collection” trin.cam.ac.uk; ACAD; findmypast.com 23 June 2023) HJ