Frederic Boase (7 October 1843 – 23 December 1916) was a Cornish librarian and biographer.
Family
He was born at Lariggan,
Penzance
Penzance ( ; ) is a town, civil parish and port in the Penwith district of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is the westernmost major town in Cornwall and is about west-southwest of Plymouth and west-southwest of London. Situated in the ...
,
Cornwall
Cornwall (; or ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is also one of the Celtic nations and the homeland of the Cornish people. The county is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, ...
to John Josias Arthur Boase (1801–1896), banker, and his wife, Charlotte née Scholl (1802–1873). The youngest of four boys and two girls, he went to school at Penzance and
Bromsgrove
Bromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England, about north-east of Worcester and south-west of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 34,755 in at the 2021 census. It gives its name to the wider Bromsgrove District, of which it is ...
grammar schools between 1855 and 1859. Unmarried, he died at St Leonards on 23 December 1916.
Career
He was trained in the field of law, but did not make a career of it. He was admitted a solicitor on 31 January 1867, and went into practice at
Exmouth
Exmouth is a harbor, port town, civil parishes in England, civil parish and seaside resort situated on the east bank of the mouth of the River Exe, southeast of Exeter.
In 2011 it had a population of 34,432, making Exmouth the List of settl ...
,
Devon
Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...
. In 1877 he was appointed as librarian to the
Incorporated Law Society, retiring in September 1903.
His major work was ''Modern English Biography''. It was published in three volumes from 1892 to 1901. These were followed by a supplement of three volumes. The work eventually contained 30,000 biographies of people dying in the period 1851 to 1900.
[ Keith Thomas, ''Changing Conceptions of National Biography: the Oxford DNB in historical perspective'', Issues 9-10; Issue 12, p. 21]
Google Books
Notes
*
*"Obituary" (1917) 10 Law Library Journal 12 (21-27 June 1917
Google Books*"Obituary" (1918) 19 Library Association Record 8
Google Books*(1917) 19 Library World 213 Google Books
*(1917) 142 Law Times 141 (6 January 1917) Google Books
*Boase, Frederic. An Account of the families of Boase or Bowes, originally residing at Paul and Madron in Cornwall. 1876
Page 13
*"Modern English Biography", The Athenaeum, January to June 1909, No 4246, 13 March 1909
p 315
*"Boase, Frederic" (1966) 62 Book Review Digest 12
Google Books
External links
''Modern English Biography'' (volume 1 of 4) A-H by Frederic Boase. ''Modern English Biography'' (volume 2 of 4) I-Q by Frederic Boase.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Boase, Frederic
1843 births
1916 deaths
English biographers
English librarians
People from Penzance