Tag: John Lee FRS
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Befriending Byron and Poaching Antiquities: John Lee in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1810–1815
Who spends five years travelling in the Mediterranean and Middle East, hangs out with Byron in Athens, and gets in trouble for poaching Greco-Roman antiquities? A Cambridge maths graduate called John Lee, that’s who. This post looks at some key moments in Lee’s five-year tour of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East in 1810–1815. He…
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John Ross’s Arctic Artefacts on Display in Oxford
The Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, is home to thousands of treasures. Many of those treasures were taken from (or “gifted by”) indigenous peoples around the world for study or as status symbols in European museums, universities, and private homes. Among the artefacts on display in the Museum, is a collection of Inuit hunting and fishing tools.…
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Scandinavian Artefacts in John Lee’s Private Museum
John Lee’s private museum at Hartwell House was said to contain some 4,000 items. The main room’s sixteen large glass cases and several smaller cabinets formed a ‘miscellaneous collection of articles culled from the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms; as well as antiquarian relics, and works of industrial art.’ The museum had sections devoted to the arts…
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John Lee’s Walking Tour of Ireland, 1806–07
On 31 July 1806, John Fiott, later known as John Lee, left London to embark on a seven-month walking tour of Ireland, England and Wales. I wrote about his life, and about his walking tour of England in Wales in earlier posts. This post will look at the six months he spent walking around the southern half…
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John Lee’s Walking Tour of England and Wales, August 1806
See John Lee’s biography here. On 31 July 1806, 21-year-old John Fiott (later known as John Lee) set out on a seven-month walking tour of England, Wales, and Ireland. He walked almost every day and kept a detailed diary of the things he saw and the people he met. Those diaries, totalling over 540 manuscript pages,…
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John Lee: Traveller, Egyptologist, Astronomer
John Lee is not well remembered today, but in his lifetime he was known across Britain and Ireland, South Africa, North America, and north Africa. Lee’s home, Hartwell, was celebrated for its observatory and for his private collection of ancient artefacts. How did a merchant’s son rise to such celebrity in scientific and antiquarian circles?…