Alexander Macmillan was born in Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, and was cofounder of Macmillan Publishers in 1843, with his brother Daniel.
Alexander was the partner who developed the literary reputation of the company while Daniel took charge of the business and commercial side. Originally called Macmillan & Co., the firm started as a successful bookshop in Cambridge. The brothers soon started publishing books as well as selling them. After Daniel's death in 1857, Alexander continued to run the firm.
Donald Dale was born in Bournemouth. He attended King's College London, and published many articles about Samuel Pepys in ‘Notes and Queries’ in the 1940s. Dale was the nephew of Edwin Chappell.
Will Arnold-Forster was the youngest son of Hugh Oakeley Arnold-Forster, a Liberal Unionist MP and his wife, Mary Story-Maskeline. He inherited an interest in art from his mother, and studied at the Slade School between 1905 and 1908 where he won several prizes. He moved to Italy in 1911 living in Tuscany. At the outbreak of war he joined the Royal Navy.
After the war, he married Katharine Laird Cox (known as Ka), who was then working at the Admiralty, and they moved to Cornwall where they purchased 'The Eagle’s Nest'. He was an enthusiastic gardener, and his garden at 'The Eagle’s Nest' was described as spectacular. He worked on the Memorial Garden at St Ives, and with the sculptor Barbara Hepworth on her garden there.
As a Labour politician, Arnold-Forster was a strong human rights advocate, and became involved in the creation of the League of Nations (1920). In the interwar period he was influential in foreign policy debates that tried to find an alternative to war and argued for multilateral disarmament. During the Second World War he continued to advance ideas for a new international body with more coercive powers. After the war he continued writing and speaking on internationalism and the United Nations.
As an artist, he first joined the St Ives Arts Club in 1909 and was noted for landscapes and pastels. His work is included in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Will and Ka were interested in progressive education, and they sent their son Mark, aged seven, to boarding school in Switzerland, and two years later to a boarding school in Salem, Baden-Württemberg run by Kurt Hahn. Hahn, a Jew, was imprisoned in Germany, but was released with the assistance of the Arnold-Forsters and fled to Scotland in 1933. Together they were instrumental in the founding of Gordonstoun. Will was the first chairman of the board of directors and Mark was one of the first pupils.
Ka died suddenly in 1938 at the age of 51, while her husband was in North America on a peace mission. The following year he married his friend Ruth Leigh-Mallory (widow of George Mallory). She died three years later of cancer.
Admitted as a pensioner at Magdalene College in October 1876.
Was a D.L. (Deputy Lieutenant) and J.P. (Justice of the Peace).
He died at Bronsil, Eastnor, Ledbury aged 70.
Eugene Power was born in Traverse City, Michigan and received his BA degree (1927) and his MBA (1930) from the University of Michigan.
During World War II, Power directed the microfilming of thousands of rare books and other printed materials in British libraries. He paid the library a minimal fee per exposure and then took the film to the United States where he sold copies to US libraries. The idea was both a clever business arrangement and a benefit to American scholars, who lacked access to European library collections. It was also an inventive form of preservation in light of wartime threats to libraries. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Power in the 1970s for this preservation work.
In 1938 he founded University Microfilms International in Michigan. The company merged microfilming with xerography, helping to make out-of-print books available for circulation again. The company also pioneered a business model for publishing limited-interest doctoral dissertations, becoming the publisher of record for all U.S. dissertations in 1951.
University Microfilms was acquired by the Xerox Corporation in 1962 for $8 million. Power continued to work for Xerox until his mandatory retirement in 1970 at the age of 65. The company he founded is now ProQuest.
In 1967, Power created the Power Foundation for Philanthropy. He donated funds to establish the Power Center for the Performing Arts at his alma mater, the University of Michigan. He also endowed a scholarship program at the university (affiliated for many years with Magdalene College at Cambridge University) and helped to buy the site of the Battle of Hastings in England to preserve it from real estate speculation.
Power served two terms as a regent of the University of Michigan, served on the council of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and became president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges in 1970. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1975.
In 1987, Marion Island in Lake Michigan, was renamed "Power Island". Power died of Parkinson's disease in 1993 at the age of 88.
Born on in Bloemfontein, Orange Free State.
In December 1910 he won an exhibition to Exeter College, Oxford and went up to the University in 1911 to read Classics. In 1913 he achieved a Second and changed to study English. He achieved a First in his finals in 1915.
He served in France during the war including at the Battle of the Somme. In October 1916 he got Trench Fever and returned to England where he remained for the rest of the war.
1920 – appointed reader in English language at the University of Leeds.
1925 – 1945 held the Rawlinson and Bosworth chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University and was a Fellow of Pembroke College.
1945 – 1959 was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature and Fellow of Merton College.
Tolkien was a close friend of C. S. Lewis, a co-member of the informal literary discussion group The Inklings.
He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.
Amongst his work are The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The Buttery Book, 1686-1690 [MCAD/14/2/6] is the first one in which Edward Townsend has written his name.
Born in Willenhall, Staffordshire and was the son of an engineer.
Educated at West Bridgford Grammar School and Nottingham University.
In 1936 he moved to Cambridge where he taught for the University Correspondence College. He produced a number of editions for the University Tutorial Press.
In 1956, a chance meeting with John Stevens (Director of Studies at Magdalene) secured an invitation to supervise for the College.
1965 - became a Lecturer in English
1980 - he retired and was made a Fellow-Commoner
He met his first wife, Nell, at local meetings of young socialists during the 1930s. They married in 1936 and had two sons.
After her death in 1989 he married Penny Moffett.
He died in Girton in 2000.
Obituary in the College Magazine, 1999-2000, pp. 14-15
Master of Magdalene College, 1746-1760
Born at Billingham, Durham in 1717 the son of Thomas Chapman
School - Richmond
Admitted pensioner at the age of 17 at Christ's College on 17 May 1734
Matriculated in 1734
Scholar, 1734
B.A. 1737-8; M.A. 1741;
LL.D. from Magdalene, 1748; D.D. 1749 (Lit. Reg.)
Fellow of Christ's, 1741-46
Ordained priest (Lincoln), 23 Sept. 1744
Master of Magdalene, 1746-60
Vice-Chancellor, 1748-49
A History of Magdalene College, 1428-1988 describes him as follows
"Even by the easy-going standards of the 18th century Chapman was a shameless jobber, with all the delicacy of feeling of a hog: nevertheless his entry into a College which he know to have resisted his appointment can hardly have been comfortable".
"Chapman's Mastership came to gruesome but entirely fitting end on Mon 9 June 1760, when he died in the Master's Lodge, apparently as a result of his own gluttony".
"He is gone to his grave with five fine mackerel (large and full of roe) in his belly. He ate them all at one dinner; but his fate was a turbot on Trinity Sunday, of which after his sixth fish he never held up his head more, and a violent looseness carried him off. They say he made a very good end". This may have been an exaggeration and he made have died of a fever which he caught on the Friday.
Chaplain to the King
Rector of Kirkby-Overblow, Yorks., 1749-60
Prebendary of Durham, 1750
Died 9 June 1760
Buried in Magdalene Chapel
Appointed College Porter in 1872 (with a salary of £100 pa, plus grass fines and half the gate fines, and increased by £10 pa in 1876), though he had already been employed by the College for many years, as he was given a gratuity of £15 in 1869, in consideration of long service (B/441, pp 221, 228, 232, 240). Fleet probably died in office in 1885, when James Stearn was appointed Head Porter.
Portrait of George Fleet MCWA/A/50
Born in Horsted Keynes, Sussex, England
1861 census - living on Histon Road with his wife Emma (aged 44), daughter Emma (aged 9) and sons Harry (aged 7) and George (aged 5)
1871 census - living at 11 Pleasant Row with his daughter Emma and sons Harry (cabinet maker) and George
1881 census living in Magdalene College. Widower