Frederic Harrison Letters

An assorted collection of letters from the Positivist philosopher and critic Frederic Harrison (1831-1923) to Lady Dorothy Nevill (1826-1913), William Leonard Courtney, Mr Stuart and an anonymous male recipient.

Frederic Harrison was born in London and educated at Wadham College, Oxford where he took a first-class in Literae Humaniores in 1853. Harrison later said that he had arrived at Oxford with 'the remnants of boyish Toryism and orthodoxy', and left 'a Republican, a democrat, and a Free-Thinker' (Autobiographic Memoirs, 1.95). This transformation owed something to the theories of Auguste Comte, which he encountered in works by John Stuart Mill and George Henry Lewes, among others, and later learned were influencing his tutor, Richard Congreve.
He was called to the bar in 1858, and, in addition to his practice in equity cases, soon began to distinguish himself as an effective critic in various journals such as the Westminster Review.
His special interest in legislation for the working classes led him to be placed upon the Trades Union Commission of 1867-1869; he was secretary to the commission for the digest of the law, 1869-1870; and was from 1877 to 1889 professor of jurisprudence and international law under the council of legal education.
A follower of the positive philosophy, but in conflict with Richard Congreve as to details, he led the Positivists who split off and founded Newton Hall in 1881, and he was president of the English Positivist Committee from 1880 to 1905; he was also editor and part author of the Positivist New Calendar of great Men (1892), and wrote much on Comte and Positivism. In 1889 he was elected an alderman of the London County Council, but resigned in 1893. Towards the end of his life he became a JP and held offices in the Royal Historical Society, the Sociological Society, the Eastern Question Association, and the London Library.

Sources: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (accessed Feb 2008); Wikipedia (accessed March 2008)

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Purchased from John Drury Rare Books

Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections also holds correspondence between Harrison and Joseph Chamberlain within the Joseph Chamberlain collection (ref. JC5/40/1-8)

Associated Materials
Various repositories contain manuscript material relating to Frederic Harrison including the library of London School of Economics, Cambridge University Library and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, amongst others.