Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/176

 century. Preliminary studies of general London history he embodied in "London" (1892 ; new edit. 1894), 'Westminster' (1895), 'South London' (1899), 'East London ' (1901), and ' The Thames ' (1902). He was also general editor from 1897 of 'The Fascination of London,' a series of handbooks to London topography. But the great survey was not completed at his death, and, finished by other hands, it appeared in ten comprehensively illustrated volumes after his death, viz. : 'Early London' (1908), 'Medieval London' (2 vols. 1906), 'London in the Time of the Tudors' (1904), 'London in the Time of the Stuarts' (1903), 'London in the Eighteenth Century' (1902), 'London in the Nineteenth Century' (1909), 'London City' (1910), 'London North ' (1911) and 'London South' (1912). He also originated in 1900, with (Sir) A. Conan Doyle, Lord Coleridge, and others, the ' Atlantic Union,' a society for entertaining in England American and British colonial visitors. Becoming a Freemason in 1862, he was hon. sec. of the small society, the Masonic Archaeological Institute. Some eighteen years later he was member of a small Archaeological Lodge, which, originally consisting of nine members, now has 2000 corresponding members scattered over the globe. He long resided at Hampstead, where he was president of the Antiquarian Historical Society, and vice-president of the Art Society. He was elected F.S.A. in 1894.

Besant died at his residence, Frognal End, Hampstead, on 9 June 1901, and was buried in the burial ground in Church Row attached to Hampstead parish church. He married in Oct. 1874 Mary Garrett (d. 1904), daughter of Eustace Forster Barham of Bridgwater, and left issue two sons and two daughters. His library was sold at Sotheby's on 24 March 1902. Bronze busts by (Sir) George Frampton, R.A., were set up in the crypt of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1901 and on the Victoria Embankment, near Waterloo Bridge, in 1902. A portrait, painted by John Pettie, R.A., and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887, now belongs to his elder son. A portrait was also painted by Emslie.

Besant was of a thick-set figure, with bushy beard, somewhat brusque in manner, but genial among intimate friends, generous in help to struggling literary aspirants, and imbued with a high sense of public duty. His methodical habits of mind and work, which were due in part to his mathematical training, rendered his incessant labour effective in very varied fields. In his own business of authorship his practice did not always cohere with his principle ; by selling outright the copyrights of his novels he contradicted the settled maxim of the Authors' Society that authors should never part with their copyrights. He had no love of priests and religious dogma, and tended to depreciate the religious work of the church in the East End of London (see Nineteenth Century, 1887), but he admired and energetically supported the social work of the Salvation Army.

Of Besant' s novels written alone after Rice's death fifteen appeared in the three-volume form (at 31s. 6d.), and were soon reissued in cheap single volumes. These works were: 1. 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' 1882. 2. ' The Revolt of Man,' 1882. 3. 'All in a Garden Fair,' 1883. 4. 'The Captain's Room,' 1883. 5. 'Dorothy Forster,' 1884. 6. 'Uncle Jack,' 1885. 7. 'Children of Gibeon,' 1886. 8. 'The World went very well then,' 1887. 9. 'Herr Paulus,' 1888. 10. 'For Faith and Freedom,' 1888. 11. 'The Bell of St. Paul's,' 1889. 12. 'Armorel of Lyonesse,' 1890. 13. 'St. Katharine's by the Tower,' 1891. 14. 'The Ivory Gate,' 1892. 15. 'The Rebel Queen,' 1893 ; Dutch trans. 1895. There followed, with two exceptions, in single volumes at six shillings, 16. 'Beyond the Dreams of Avarice,' 1895. 17. 'In Deacon's Orders,' 1895. 18. 'The Master Craftsman,' 2 vols. 1896. 19. 'The City of Refuge,' 3 vols. 1896. 20. 'A Fountain Sealed,' 1897. 21. 'The Changeling,' 1898. 22. 'The Orange Girl,' 1899. 23. 'The Fourth Generation,' 1900. 24. 'The Lady of Lynn,' 1901. 25. 'No Other Way,' 1902. 'The Holy Rose,' 1890, and 'A Five Years' Tryst,' 1902, were collections of short stories in single volumes. 'Katharine Regina' (1887 ; Russian trans. 1888) and 'The Inner House' (1888) appeared in Arrowsmith's Shilling Library.

He was also author of 'The Eulogy of Richard Jefferies' (1888), 'Captain Cook' 1889), 'The Rise of the Empire' (1897), and 'The Story of King Alfred' (1901). [n 1879 he wrote 'Constantinople,' with William Jackson Brodribb [q. v. Suppl. II]. There appeared posthumously 'Essays and Historiettes' and 'As we are and as we may be ' in 1903, and his 'Autobiography,' edited by S. Squire Sprigge, in 1902.