The Letters of Peter le Page Renouf (1822-97) Vol. 4 London (1864-97)

Sir Peter le Page Renouf (1822-97), a Guernseyman, was described by Lord Acton as 'the most learned Englishman I know'. The remarkable collection of his surviving letters, published in four volumes by University College Dublin Press between 2002 and 2004, covers Renouf's varied career from his days as a student in Oxford, his time as a lecturer in the 1850s at the new Catholic University in Dublin until after his retirement as Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum. This fourth and final volume covers Renouf's life in London from 1864 until his death in 1897. For 22 years he worked as an Inspector of Schools, mostly in the district of the Tower Hamlets. He kept up his research in Egyptology and in this volume there are many letters from his academic colleagues on the Continent. In the family correspondence there are some tantalising glimpses of the progress of the Renouf children Louis and Edith through Cambridge into adult life. In 1886 Renouf's life changed dramatically when he was appointed Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum. He became very unhappy when the Trustees insisted that he should retire at the end of 1891 and in the letters there are frequent references to efforts to have his grievances addressed. His bitterness towards his former assistant and eventual successor, E. Wallis Budge, pervades the letters in the final years of his life.