ABSTRACT
Clements Robert Markham (1830–1916) served the Hakluyt Society for twenty-eight years as Honorary Secretary and then for nearly twenty years as President, while he edited for the Society some thirty volumes, the first published in 1859, the last in 1923. 1 He was the dominant figure in the middle period of the history of the Society. Yet it is difficult to assess his exact role, although there can be no doubt that his personality carried the Society forward, after its early decades, through to the end of the nineteenth century. Apart from the evidence of his posts and of his editions, the Society’s records reveal little about the man. This may well be because the Society involved only a small part of his multifarious activities - in this he was not, of course, alone among the Society’s Victorian leaders. He was, for instance, a joint Honorary Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society for twenty-five years (1863–1888) and President for twelve (1893–1905). In the Hakluyt Society he was admired, patently for his energy and tenacity, but not, perhaps, invariably respected. 2 The annual report for 1886 announced his resignation as Secretary with only a reference to his length of service and no other commendation; yet the 1889 report stated that ‘shortly before his death he [the then president, Colonel Yule, a distinguished scholar] sent for Mr Clements Markham, and expressed the wish that he should succeed him in the office’. 3 Markham’s own scholarship may 166have stretched over too wide a range of subjects and as an HS editor he has been severely criticised. 1
