Lubbock, Percy (1879-1965), Pepys librarian and writer

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Lubbock, Percy (1879-1965), Pepys librarian and writer

4 June 1879 - 2 August 1965

Percy Lubbock was born on 4 June 1879 in London, the fourth child of Frederic Lubbock, merchant banker, and his wife, Catherine. He was educated at Eton College, then at King's College, Cambridge, where he was placed in the first class for the classical tripos in 1901.

After university Lubbock worked for the Board of Education in a post he found 'uncongenial'. In 1906 he was elected Pepys Librarian at Magdalene College. In that year his first book, Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her Letters, was published. In 1908 he gave up his post in order to devote himself to writing, and in 1909 he published Samuel Pepys.

Lubbock contributed regularly to the Times Literary Supplement between 1908 and 1914 and during the First World War worked on behalf of the Red Cross. Henry James was his idol and friend and after James's death in 1916 Lubbock orchestrated the publication of the unfinished works (The Ivory Tower, The Sense of the Past, and The Middle Years), a two-volume collection of letters, and a memoir.

In 1925 he published an edition of A. C. Benson's Diary, commemorating the Eton schoolmaster whose recommendation had secured Lubbock the post of Pepys Librarian.

In 1926 Lubbock married Lady Sybil Marjorie Scott (1879–1943). They lived at Villa Medici in Fiesole, Italy, for the next fourteen years. In the late 1940s Lubbock moved to Lerici on the Gulf of La Spezia and into his much prized Gli Scafari. He was appointed CBE in 1952. He died at Gli Scafari on 2 August 1965 and was buried at Lerici.