Ashton Wentworth Dilke

Ashton Wentworth Dilke ((1850-08-11)11 August 185012 March 1883(1883-03-12) (aged 32)) was a British traveller and radical Liberal politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1880 to 1883.[1]

Ashton Wentworth Dilke
Image published on page 421 of "The Illustrated London News", 1st of May 1880.
Born11 August 1850
London
Died12 March 1883 (age 32)
Algiers
OccupationPolitician
LanguageEnglish
NationalityBritish
EducationTrinity Hall, Cambridge
SpouseMargaret Eustace Smith
ChildrenSir Fisher Wentworth Dilke, 4th Baronet
Clement Wentworth Dilke
Sibille Mary Wentworth Dilke
ParentsSir Charles Dilke, 1st Baronet
και Mary Chatfield
RelativesSir Charles Dilke, 2nd Baronet (brother)
Charles Wentworth Dilke (grandfather)

He was the younger son of Sir Charles Dilke, 1st Baronet,[2] and was educated privately before being admitted to Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1868.[3] He was made a scholar in 1870 and was a prominent member of the Cambridge Union Society, although he left before finishing his degree, instead travelling to Russia in 1872. For several months he lived in a Russian village and studied the language, as well as examining the status of the Russian peasantry. He returned in 1873 showing signs of tuberculosis, the disease which eventually killed him. He began writing a book about Russia, two chapters of which appeared in the Fortnightly Review in 1874, but it was never published.[4]

In 1875, he bought the Weekly Dispatch for £14,000, acting as editor until 1876 and then again between 1878 and 1880. In 1878 he published a translation of Ivan Turgenev's Virgin Soil.

In 1876 he married Margaret Smith, eldest daughter of Thomas Eustace Smith,[5] with whom he had two sons and a daughter. In 1880 he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but his ill-health led him to resign in February 1883, spending the last few months of his life in Algiers, where he died in March aged 32 years.

References

  1. "Ashton Wentworth Dilke". thepeerage.com. Retrieved 15 December 2019.
  2. "Sir Charles Dilke, 1st baronet". thepeerage.com. Retrieved 14 December 2019.
  3. "Dilke, Ashton Wentworth (DLK868AW)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
  4. Oxford DNB: Dilke, Ashton Wentworth
  5. Roy Jenkins, Dilke: A Victorian Tragedy (1996), p. 112.
Media offices
Preceded by
T. J. Serle
Editor of the Weekly Dispatch
18751876
Succeeded by
Fox Bourne
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Charles Frederic Hamond and
Joseph Cowen
Member of Parliament for Newcastle-upon-Tyne
1880–1883
With: Joseph Cowen
Succeeded by
John Morley and
Joseph Cowen
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.