Owen, Sir Richard I Professor Owen, Owen l, 1804–1892, naturalist. F.R.S. Studied medicine at Univ. of Edinburgh and at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. M.R.C.S. 1826. Hunterian professor of comparative anatomy and physiology at Royal College of Surgeons; conservator of Hunterian Museum; superintendent of natural history departments of British Museum; instrumental in establishment of Museum of Natural History, South Kensington. Lecturer on scientific subjects. Contributor for more than sixty years to scientific journals; occasional contributor to general periodicals, e.g., Athenaeum, Quart. Rev., Blackwood's, Edin. Rev. Author of numerous scientific monographs, treatises, books. K.C.B. 1884, and recipient of many other honours.
Owen met Dickens in 1843; the two men became friends. Dickens at times visited the Owens and corresponded with them; on at least one occasion he invited them to one of his readings. One of Dickens's novels that Owen enjoyed was Martin Chuzzlewit. Dickens read with much interest Owen's On the Extent and Aims of a National Museum of Natural History and his Memoir on the Gorilla. Owen had presented to Dickens a copy of the Memoir. Dickens had high regard and respect for Owen.
According' to Owen's biographer, it was Forster who "in the first instance" suggested Owen's writing for H.W. (R. S. Owen, Life of Richard Owen, I, 389). Owen expressed interest in writing for Dickens's periodical, though he found little time for such writing. In a letter of May 7, 1851 (misdated 1857, in Nonesuch Letters), Dickens wrote to him: "Both your proposals are most delightful to me, especially the zoological one." Though not stated to be so, the "proposals" would seem to have been suggestions for H.W. articles. In the following year, Dickens wrote to Owen: "[Forster] perfectly overwhelmed me with delight by telling me you had intimated to him that you might sometimes find leisure to write some familiar papers on Natural History" for H.W. "It would be in vain for me to attempt to tell you with what pride and pleasure I should receive such assistance, or what high store I should set by it." Soon after the publication of Owen's first H.W. paper ["Poisonous Serpents", VI, 186–88. Nov. 6, 1852] (which Owen specifically mentioned in a letter to his sister Catherine), Dickens suggested that Owen write for the periodical a series of papers "describing the peculiarities and points of interest" of animals in the Zoological Gardens, the papers to appear under "some such title as 'Private Lives of Public Friends'" (Life of Richard Owen, I, 389-92). Owen contributed only one paper of the suggested series ["Justice to the Hyæna", VI, 373—77. Jan. 1, 1853].
Many references to Owen appeared in H.W. Among Dickens's references was that in "A Monument of French Folly," which mentioned Owen as "one of the most distinguished physiologists in the world." Horne, in "Zoological Sessions," wrote of Owen's activities in connection with the animals in the Zoological Gardens; and Hart, in "Nature's Greatness in Small Things," explained the significance of Owen's work on the vertebrates. Other references to Owen appeared in articles by Morley, Rinder, Sala, Dodd, Dixon, and Costello. Owen referred to himself in two of his own articles. "Justice to the Hyæna," written in the person of a non-zoologist, recorded the writer's visiting the Hunterian Museum and finding "the Hunterian Professor himself engaged with the osteological collection"; "A Leaf from the Oldest of Books" [XIII, 500–02. June 7, 1856] referred to a quadruped "which Owen has called the Hyrcotherium" and to a fossil terrapene which "will be the subject of two beautiful plates in the forthcoming number of Owen's History of British Fossil Reptiles."
The A.Y.R. article "Owen's Museum," Sept. 27, 1862, pictured a British museum of natural history as Owen envisioned it. The writer of the article hoped that the museum, when it came into existence, would be named after Owen – "our greatest living naturalist."
D.N.B.
Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
