Open Collections

[Bookplate for Charles Manby by Suffield]

1820

1 bookplate : steel engraving ; 5.9 x 8.5 cm

London (England)

Prints

image/jpeg

Charles Manby (1804-1884) was an English civil engineer. He was born on 4 February 1804, at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, the eldest son of Aaron Manby (1776-1850), also an engineer, and Juliana, née Fewster. After an early education in a Roman Catholic seminary, and a stint at the semi-military college of St. Servan at Rennes in Brittany in 1814, Charles Manby joined his father at the Horseley ironworks, Tipton, in 1815. Here he assisted in building the first iron steamboat, the Aaron Manby. Around 1823, Manby went to Paris to take charge of the gasworks established there by his father, and he subsequently superintended his father's foundry at Charenton. Later, he was employed by the tobacco department of the French government, and also received a commission in the French military engineers. After returning to England, and taking on management of the Beaufort ironworks in south Wales in 1829, he married Ellen Jones in 1830. Charles Manby established himself as a civil engineer in London in 1835, specializing in the heating and ventilating of buildings. He was appointed secretary to the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1839, where he served for seventeen years. He retired from the institution in 1956, and from then on was the London agent for Robert Stephenson & Co. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1953, and was a member of the international commission which met in Paris to consider the feasibility of constructing the Suez Canal. He also helped to establish the engineer and railway volunteer staff corps in 1864. In 1858, he was married a second time, after the death of his first wife, to Harriet, daughter of Major Nicholas Willard of Eastbourne, and widow of W. C. Hood, formerly a partner in the publishing house of Whitaker & Co. No children were born from either marriage. Charles Manby died in London on 31 July 1884. Charles Manby is noted as the editor of Frederick M. Kelley's, "On the junction of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the practicability of a ship canal, without locks, by the valley of the Atrato," which can be found on microform in the UBC Library catalogue. Below the escutcheon is the artist's mark: "Suffield sculpt". The bookplate has trimmed corners.
References:
1) H.W. Fincham, "The Artists and Engravers of British and American Bookplates," (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd, 1897), 94.
2) Biography of Charles Manby found at: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "Manby, Charles," (2008) <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/17918?_fromAuth=1> (4 February 2008).

RBSC Bookplates

2008

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