Lyme Regis Monographs

The nine monographs in this volume form a collection of newly-researched biographies of people well-known in Lyme Regis, Dorset in the nineteenth century. Three of the subjects of the monographs have an international reputation. Walter Parry Hodges was the most famous sporting artist of the 19th century, his monograph fills in details of his biography and family history hitherto unknown. William Daniel Conybeare is known as the father of the two sciences of geology and palaeontology, his monograph places his achievements within the context of his remarkable family and its connections with Axminster. Dr William Buckland, Conybeare's closest friend and a native of Axminster, was Oxford's first Reader in Mineralogy and another of the founders of earth science. His monograph fills in background details of his family unknown even to his own children. The other six monographs are focussed on important members of the Lyme community in the nineteenth century. George Roberts was both a historian of national repute as well as a distinguished schoolmaster whose teaching methods were almost a century ahead of their time. George Holland was interested in meteorology and published a book on the rain in 1828. Henry Bennett Junior was important as an organist and composer of hymns warranting three entries in John Julian's 'Dictionary of Hymnology'. The Organs and Organists of Lyme Regis Parish Church over two centuries form the subject of another monograph. Walter Parry Hodges's son, Dr Frederic Parry Hodges, dominated Lyme in the 19th century from his pulpit in the parish church where a large, early 16th-century tapestry of national importance still hangs that was the gift of Revd Edward Peek, a member of the famous and wealthy family of London merchants and philanthropists, who is the subject of another monograph.