T. E. Kebbel

Thomas Edward Kebbel (c. 23 November 1826 – 5 November 1917) was an English journalist.[1]

He was born in Kilby, Leicestershire, the son of Rev. Henry Kebbel, vicar of Wistow and Kilby.[2] He was educated at the Merchant Taylors' School and at Exeter College, Oxford and Lincoln College, Oxford, where he gained a second class BA in the Greats in 1849.[2] He then studied law, being called by the Inner Temple in 1862.[2]

He started his career in journalism in 1856, joining the Conservative-supporting Press newspaper.[2] He would remain a supporter of the Conservative Party for the rest of his life.[2] In 1873 he joined the Standard as a leader writer, where he also contributed articles on politics, sports and rural life.[2] From 1858 he enjoyed a close friendship with Benjamin Disraeli.[2] According to Lord Rowton, Disraeli had wanted Kebbel and Lord Barrington to write his official biography and that he had left written instructions to that effect.[3] However, after Disraeli's death in 1881, Kebbel and Rowton examined Disraeli's papers at Hughenden Manor but no such instructions were found.[3] The biography was then entrusted to William Flavelle Monypenny and completed by George Earle Buckle.[3]

Kebbel's book The Agricultural Labourer was a success and went through four editions. After his death, The Times said that Kebbel was "always a countryman at heart...He was no mean sportsman; his happiest reminiscences were those of hours spent with dog and gun".[2]

In 1873 Kebbel married Evelyn Catherine Clarke, who died in June 1912.[2]

Works
  • Essays upon History and Politics (1864).
  • English Statesmen Since the Peace of 1815 (1868).
  • The Agricultural Labourer (1870; 2nd ed. 1887; 3rd ed. 1893; 4th ed. 1907).
  • A History of Toryism: from the Accession of Mr. Pitt to Power in 1783 to the Death of Lord Beaconsfield in 1881 (1886; 1972 ed. with introduction by Edgar Feuchtwanger) ISBN 0855461683
  • Life of George Crabbe (1888)
  • The Old and the New English Country Life (1891).
  • Lord Beaconsfield and Other Tory Memories (1907).
  • The Battle of Life: A Retrospect of Sixty Years (1912).

Notes
  1. Jonathan Parry, ‘Kebbel, Thomas Edward (1826–1917)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 21 Jul 2018.
  2. The Times (7 November 1917), p. 9.
  3. The Times (28 October 1910), p. 11.
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