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George Sidney Roberts Kitson Clark (14 June 1900 – 8 December 1975) was an English historian, specialising in the nineteenth century. He was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1922 to 1975, and additionally held the title of Reader in Constitutional History in the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge between 1954 and 1967.

Early life and education

George Kitson Clark born on born on 14 June 1900 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. He was the son of the engineer Edwin Kitson Clark (1866-1943) who began his engineering training with a three year pupilage which he served at the Airedale Foundry of Messrs. Kitson from 1888-1891, later becoming a partner and chairman of the firm. George's sister was Mary Kitson Clark. His paternal grandfather was E. C. Clark, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge. While growing up, he lived in Meanwood, village to the north of Leeds that would be one of its suburbs.

George Kitson Clark was educated at Shrewsbury School, then an all boys public school (i.e. an independent boarding school) in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. In 1919, he matriculated into Trinity College, Cambridge to study the Historical Tripos, having been awarded an exhibition. He achieved a lower second class in Part I of the Tripos, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1921 having achieved first class honours in Part II.

Academic career

He lived the life of a bachelor don as a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, his alma mater, from 1922 to 1975. He became a research fellow of his college in 1922 and a college lecturer in 1928. He was additionally a lecturer in the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge from 1929 and was Reader in Constitutional History from 1954 to 1967. He was disappointed to never hold a university professorial chair or to reach the senior leadership of his college.

He is known as a revisionist historian of the Repeal of the Corn Laws. G. D. H. Cole identified a "Kitson Clark" school of historians revising the assessment of the Anti-Corn Law League and the Chartists. He delivered the Ford Lectures in 1959–60, speaking on "The Making of Victorian England".

Jack Plumb, who disliked Kitson Clark, describes him as a reformer of the History Tripos and obstacle to Lewis Namier, with various swipes. He served as chair of the Faculty Board of History from 1956 to 1958. Also he was a conservative in most of his views, he "played a prominent part" in enlarging the Historical Tripos syllabus to include American history and the history of the British Empire.

In 1975, he was elected as a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He died the same year, on 8 December 1975 at his college in Cambridge.

Selected works

• Peel and the Conservative Party: a Study in Party Politics, 1832–41 (1929; 1st ed.)
• Guide for Research Students Working on Historical Subjects (1958)
• Making of Victorian England (1962)
• Peel and the Conservative Party (1964; 2nd ed.)
• An Expanding Society: Britain 1830–1900 (1967)
• The Critical Historian (1967)
• Churchmen and the Condition of England 1832–1885 (1973)
• Portrait of an Age (1977) editor

References

• Robert Robson (editor) (1967), Ideas and Institutions of Victorian Britain: Essays in honour of George Kitson Clark

Notes

1. ^ "Clark, George Sidney Roberts Kitson (1900–1975), historian". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 10 January 2013. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/31317. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
2. Memoirs 1944. Institute of Mechanical Engineers. 1944. Retrieved 2 September 2023.
3. Obituary, Mary Kitson Clark
4. Maurice Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England (1980), p. 197.
5. G. S. R. Kitson Clark, The Electorate and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Ser., Vol. 1, 1951 (1951), pp. 109–126.
6. G. Kitson Clark, Hunger and Politics in 1842, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 25, No. 4 (December 1953), pp. 355–374.
7. E. Sreedharan, A Textbook of Historiography, 500 B.C. to A.D. 2000 (2004), p. 249.
8. Paul A. Pickering, Alex Tyrrell, The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League (2000), p. 4.
9. J. H. Plumb, The Making of An Historian I, p. 164-5.
10. Plumb, pp. 98–9.
11. "Kitson Clark, George Sidney Roberts, (14 June 1900–8 Dec. 1975), Reader in Constitutional History, Cambridge, 1954–67, retired, 1967; Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, since 1922; University Lecturer, Cambridge University, since 1929; Praelector, Trinity College, since 1953". Who Was Who. Oxford University Press. 1 December 2007. Retrieved 2 March 2024.
12. "George Sydney Roberts Kitson Clark". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 9 February 2023. Retrieved 2 March 2024.

• 1900 births
• 1975 deaths
• Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge
• 20th-century English historians
• People from Meanwood
• People educated at Shrewsbury School