Darwin's Pupil: The Place of Sir John Lubbock, Lord Avebury, 1834-1913

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The Lubbock s were a wealthy banking family, active in science, who lived near Charles Darwin in Kent. As a youth John Lubbock after Eton actively self-educated himself mainly in natural history with, as the publication of Darwin s letters shows, a close friendship with the great biologist at the time of his studies in evolution. These of course showed a vast period of prehistory for man. This book recounts how this influenced Lubbock with his invention of prehistoric archaeology and to some extent anthropology, although he was always primarily a biologist, almost a household name in Victorian times. His considerable activities in Parliament from 1870 where we owe to him the birth of bank holidays , and his enormously popular essays in later life are described. He was very much the Victorian polymath!