George Sidney Roberts Kitson Clark (14 June 1900 – 8 December 1975) was an English historian, specialising in the nineteenth century. He was a fellowofTrinity 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.
George Kitson Clark born on born on 14 June 1900 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.[1] He was the son of the engineer Edwin Kitson Clark and brother of Mary Kitson Clark.[2] His paternal grandfather was E. C. Clark, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge.[1] While growing up, he lived in Meanwood, village to the north of Leeds that would be one of its suburbs.[1]
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.[1] 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.[1][3] He was disappointed to never hold a university professorial chair or to reach the senior leadership of his college.[1]
Jack Plumb, who disliked Kitson Clark, describes him as a reformer of the History Tripos[8] and obstacle to Lewis Namier,[9] with various swipes. He served as chair of the Faculty Board of History from 1956 to 1958.[10] 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.[1]
^Maurice Cowling, Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England (1980), p. 197.
^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.
^G. Kitson Clark, Hunger and Politics in 1842, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 25, No. 4 (December 1953), pp. 355–374.
^E. Sreedharan, A Textbook of Historiography, 500 B.C. to A.D. 2000 (2004), p. 249.
^Paul A. Pickering, Alex Tyrrell, The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League (2000), p. 4.
^J. H. Plumb, The Making of An Historian I, p. 164-5.
