Victorian

Romesh Chunder Dutt was born in Calcutta on August 13, 1848, and received his education there and at University College and the Middle Temple, London. He was called to the bar and in 1869 passed the examination for entrance to the Indian civil service, in which he served -- as the only native Indian in the nineteenth century to rise to executive authority -- from 1871 to 1897.

Born in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, on July 25, 1825, John Askham had almost no formal education. After labouring as a child in his father's shoe-making shop, Askham earned his living as a shoe-maker. He taught himself to read and write and published his verses in local newspapers and then as volumes, financed by subscriptions.

• Edwards, Owen Dudley. "Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills (1854–1900)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2010.

• Ridler, Ann Margaret. "Thomson, James (1834–1882)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.

• Boardman, Brigid M. "Thompson, Francis Joseph (1859–1907)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Jan. 2011.

Born July 18, 1811, in Calcutta, William Makepeace Thackeray was sent to England in 1817 at his father's death. He was educated at the Charterhouse School in England from 1822 to 1826 and attended Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1829-30 but left without graduating.

• Ricks, Christopher. "Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tennyson (1809–1892)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. May 2006.

• Bowerbank, Sylvia. "Taylor, Jane (1783–1824)." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.
• Gilbert, J., ed. Autobiography and other memorials of Mrs Gilbert. 3rd edn. 1878.
• Taylor, Ann and Jane. Rhymes for the Nursery. 1806.
• --. Limed Twigs to Catch Young Birds. 1808.

Swinburne was born April 5, 1837, in London, the child of an admiral, Captain Charles Henry Swinburne, and Lady Henrietta Swinburne.

• Mehew, Ernest. "Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850–1894)."Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oxford: OUP, 2004.