John E. B. Mayor
English scholar, writer and activist (1825–1910) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
English scholar, writer and activist (1825–1910) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor FBA (28 January 1825 – 1 December 1910) was an English classical scholar, writer and vegetarianism activist.
John E. B. Mayor | |
|---|---|
1891 portrait by Hubert von Herkomer | |
| Born | John Eyton Bickersteth Mayor 28 January 1825 |
| Died | 1 December 1910 (aged 85) Cambridge, England |
| Resting place | Ascension Parish Burial Ground |
| Occupation(s) | Scholar, writer, activist |
Mayor was born at Baddegama, British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) the son of Rev. Robert Mayor and Charlotte Bickersteth. His mother came from the prominent Bickersteth family and was the sister of Henry Bickersteth, 1st Baron Langdale and Rev. Edward Bickersteth. He was sent to England to be educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge. Joseph Bickersteth Mayor was his younger brother.[1]
From 1863 to 1867, Mayor was librarian of the University of Cambridge, and in 1872 succeeded H. A. J. Munro in the professorship of Latin, which he held for 28 years. His best-known work, an edition of the thirteen Satires of Juvenal, is notable for an extraordinary wealth of illustrative quotations. His Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature (1875), based on Emil Hübner's Grundriss zu Vorlesungen über die römische Litteraturgeschichte, was a valuable aid to the student, and his edition of Cicero's Second Philippic became widely used.[2]
He also edited the English works of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (1876); Thomas Baker's History of St John's College, Cambridge (1869); Richard of Cirencester's Speculum historiale de gestis regum Angliae 447–1066 (1863–69); Roger Ascham's Schoolmaster (new ed., 1883); the Latin Heptateuch (1889); and the Journal of Philology.[2]
According to the Enciklopedio de Esperanto, Mayor learned Esperanto in 1907, and gave a historic speech against Esperanto reformists at the World Congress of Esperanto held at Cambridge.
His life and work are idiosyncratically and somewhat unsympathetically described in Juvenal's Mayor: The Professor Who Lived on 2d. a Day by J. G. W. Henderson.
He is buried in the Ascension Parish Burial Ground in Cambridge.[3]
Mayor succeeded Francis William Newman as president of the Vegetarian Society[4] in 1884 and remained in that position till his death.[5] He was a strict vegetarian and teetotaller but it was noted that "he never sought to impose his rule of abstinence on others."[6] Mayor authored What is Vegetarianism?, in 1886. His vegetarian writings were published in the book, Plain Living and High Thinking in 1897.[7]
Mayor ate a strict vegetarian diet and lived off twopence a day. His diet consisted of bread, fruit, porridge and vegetables with lemonade as his only drink.[8]
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