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Julian Sturgis

Boston, 1848 - 1904, London

Biographyfound: Wikipedia, June 20, 2011 (Julian Sturgis; Julian Russell Sturgis; b. Oct. 21, 1848, Boston, Mass., d. Apr. 13, 1904; American-born novelist, poet, librettist, and lyricist who lived and worked in Britain nearly all of his life)

Sturgis, Julian Russell (1848–1904), novelist, was born at Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on 21 October 1848, the fourth son of Russell Sturgis (1805–1883) of Boston, a merchant and lawyer, and his second wife, Juliet Overing Boit (d. c.1883). His younger brother, Howard Overing Sturgis (1855–1920), was also a writer. When Julian was seven months old he was brought to England, a country which he adopted as his own though much of his childhood was also spent in Italy. He was educated in Dame Evan's house at Eton College from 1862 to 1867 and matriculated at Balliol College, Oxford, on 27 January 1868, graduating BA in 1872 and taking a second class in the final classical school. His first sketch, ‘The Philosopher's Baby’, appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1874, and he proceeded MA in 1875. His intellectual interest at university lay in classics, but he preferred dabbling in drama and was a notable athlete, being captain of the school football eleven and rowing in his college boat. He became a barrister of the Inner Temple in 1876, and a naturalized British subject in January 1877.

Over the next two years Sturgis travelled extensively throughout the world and embarked on his career as a novelist, specializing in light comedies, mostly set at Eton or Oxford. His first, the chatty John-a-Dreams (1878), was followed in 1879 by An Accomplished Gentleman, and in 1880 by Little Comedies, dialogues in dramatic form containing some of his most dazzling and characteristic writing. Comedies New and Old and Dick's Wandering appeared in 1882.

On 8 November 1883 Sturgis married, at St Patrick's Cathedral in Armagh, Ireland, Mary Maud, daughter of Colonel Marcus de la Poer Beresford, and granddaughter of Captain Robert Blakeney, whose memoirs Sturgis edited. Their marriage, which was a very happy one, produced three sons, including Mark Beresford Russell Grant-Sturgis. Possessed of an ample fortune which he had inherited from his father who died in 1883, having just retired as senior partner of Barings, Sturgis divided his time between London and the country, first at Elvington, near Dover, and then at Compton, near Guildford, where he built a house, Wancote. He continued to write, producing novels such as My Friends and I (1884), John Maidment (1885), Thraldom (1887), The Comedy of a Country House (1889), and The Folly of Pen Harrington (1897). He also attempted verse in Count Julian: a Spanish Tragedy (1893) and A Book of Song (1894), and wrote the librettos for Goring Thomas's Nadeshda (1885), Sir Arthur Sullivan's Ivanhoe (1891), and Sir Charles Villiers Stanford's Much Ado about Nothing (1901), which was published in the same year as his best novel, Stephen Calinari.

Sturgis died on 13 April 1904 at 16 Hans Road, Knightsbridge, his London residence, after a long illness; his wife survived him. He was cremated at Woking and was buried in the cemetery at Compton. He was a man of singular charm of character, the reticence which distinguishes his writings being laid aside in social circles. His novels show a peculiar and sympathetic insight into the minds of young men, while his style, at times allusive and elliptical, is influenced by Walter Pater and George Meredith, the latter of whom was greatly admired by Sturgis and was a personal friend.

Elizabeth Lee, rev. Katharine Chubbuck
Sources

J. Sutherland, ‘Sturgis, Julian Russell’, The Longman companion to Victorian fiction (1988) · J. R. Sturgis, From the books and papers of Russell Sturgis (1893) · P. Lubbock and A. C. Benson, ‘Julian Russell Sturgis’, Monthly Review, 46 (July 1904) · R. L. Wolff, Nineteenth-century fiction: a bibliographical catalogue based on the collection formed by Robert Lee Wolff, 4 (1985), 177–9 · J. R. Sturgis, ed., A boy in the Peninsular War (1899) · Foster, Alum. Oxon. · The Times (17 April 1904) · The Times (18 April 1904) · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1904)
Archives

NL Scot., corresp. with Blackwoods and verses

Wealth at death

£79,435 16s.: probate, 8 June 1904, CGPLA Eng. & Wales
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Elizabeth Lee, ‘Sturgis, Julian Russell (1848–1904)’, rev. Katharine Chubbuck, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36365, accessed 6 Aug 2013]

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