What is the Bloomsbury Project?

The Leverhulme-funded UCL Bloomsbury Project was established to investigate 19th-century Bloomsbury’s development from swampy rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life

Led by Professor Rosemary Ashton, with Dr Deborah Colville as Researcher, the Project has traced the origins, Bloomsbury locations, and reforming significance of hundreds of progressive and innovative institutions

Many of the extensive archival resources relating to these institutions have also been identified and examined by the Project, and Bloomsbury’s developing streets and squares have been mapped and described

This website is a gateway to the information gathered and edited by Project members during the Project’s lifetime, 1 October 2007–30 April 2011, with the co-operation of Bloomsbury’s institutions, societies, and local residents

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Cartoon satirising the British College of Health

Bloomsbury Institutions

Bloomsbury Streets, Squares, and Buildings

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Frederick James Furnivall (1825–1910)

a summary of his Bloomsbury connections

He was a scholar of literature and languages, and a keen oarsman, whose physician father had known the Shelleys

He matriculated at University College London in 1841

He was involved with the foundation of the Working Men’s College, where he also taught, was a member of Council, organised social activities, and was President of the Rowing Club; his wife Eleanor was the sister of one of his students at the College

He established the Browning Society with Emily Hickey in 1881

He also established the Shelley Society in 1885, among many other societies he originated

During his long life he “normally spent the greater part of the day in either the reading-room or the manuscripts department of the British Museum, with a long break for tea at his favourite ABC tea-shop on New Oxford Street...surrounded by admirers and friends” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

For more general biographical information about Frederick James Furnivall, see his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography