Collection K/PP6 - DENDY, Professor Arthur (1865-1925)

Key Information

Reference code

K/PP6

Title

DENDY, Professor Arthur (1865-1925)

Date(s)

  • 1886-1925 (Creation)

Level of description

Collection

Extent

3.5 boxes or 0.035 cubic metres

Scope and content

Correspondence, 1887-1925, mainly between Dendy and fellow academics relating to the morphology and classification of sponges, notably with George Parker Bidder, President of the Marine Biological Association of the UK; Professor William John Dakin, Professor of Zoology, University of Liverpool; Francisco Ferrer Hernandez, Musea de Gencias Naturales, Madrid, Spain; Professor William A Haswell, Emeritus Professor of Biology, University of Sydney, Australia; Ernst Hentschel, Zoologisches Museum, Hamburg, Germany; William Abbott Herdman, University of Liverpool; Professor Sydney John Hickson, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Liverpool; Randolph Kirkpartick, Natural History Museum, London; Professor James Herbert Orton, Emeritus Professor of Zoology, University of Liverpool; Joseph Pearson, Director of the Columbo Museum, Ceylon; and Edgar Thurston, Superintendent of the Government Museum, Madras, India. The correspondence also includes letters, 1919-1921, relating to the establishment of a research grant in memory of Harold Row, Dendy's assistant. Papers, 1886-1899, relating to sponge collections, particularly specimens in Australia and New Zealand, and including the dredging records for Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia, 1887-1890. Lecture notes written by Dendy, [1903-1925], including handwritten texts of lectures on 'Echinodermata', 'The development of starfish', 'Holothurioidea', 'Class Gastropoda', 'Mytilus', 'Anodarta cygnea', 'Helix', 'Mollusca', and 'Merozoa', and typescript texts of public lectures including 'The stream of life', given at a Citizens' Lecture in Edinburgh, 1921, and 'The evolution theory today', given at the Liverpool Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1923. Working notebooks, [1886]-1912, mainly containing scientific experiments and observations relating to sponges, notably the Challenger Amphipoda and the Grantia Compressa, and notes on the topographical distribution of, and biographical references to, sponge specimens. Two notebooks, 1917-1919, recording experiments and observations during Dendy's membership of the Royal Society's Committee for the Investigation of Grain Pests. Papers, 1892, relating to The Victorian land planarians [1894] by Dendy, comprising a volume of annotated and revised extracts from that work, and a letter to Dendy from Thomas Steel concerning flatworm species. Printed obituaries of Dendy, 1925-1926. Papers relating to the study of lizard-like reptiles commonly known as Tuatara (the scientific name being Sphenodon), [1897]-1910, including correspondence, 1908-1910, between Dendy and Edward Bles, Elliot Smith, Annie Howes and [William Thompson] Sedgwick, and catalogues, notes and photographs of Tuatara embryos.

System of arrangement

Dendy's correspondence has been rearranged; letters from major correspondents, together with draft replies, have been arranged in an alphabetic series of files and in chronological order within each file. Letters from or to more occasional correspondents have been arranged in chronological order in two files; one for correspondence concerning classification of sponge specimens and collections, the other for correspondence concerning the exchange of views on those classifications. Two documents from the King's College Library manuscripts collection have been integrated into the collection; namely a letter from W A Herdman which was added to the rest of his correspondence in K/PP6/1/6, and the annotated extracts of The Victorian Land Planarians which comprise K/PP6/5. The second accession of Dendy papers, in 1986, is listed at the end of the catalogue as K/PP6/7.

General Information

Name of creator

(1865-1925)

Biographical history

Born 1865; educated Manchester Grammar School and Owens College, Manchester; Assistant in the Zoological Department, British Museum (Natural History), London, 1886-1887; Demonstrator and Assistant Lecturer in Biology, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1888-1894; Professor of Biology, Canterbury College, University of New Zealand, 1894-1903; Professor of Zoology, South African College, Cape Town, South Africa, 1903-1905; Chair of Zoology, King's College London, 1905-1925; member of the Royal Society's Committee for the Investigation of Grain Pests, 1917-1919; died 1925.

Publications: A monograph of the Victorian sponges (Melbourne, 1891); editor of Animal life and human progress (Constable and Co, London, 1919); Outlines of evolutionary biology (Constable and Co, London, 1912); Porifera. Part I. Non-Antartic sponges (London, 1924); editor Problems of modern science (George G Harrap and Co, London, 1922); The Anatomy of an Australian Land Planarian ; The biological foundations of society (Constable and Co, London, 1924); An introduction to the study of Botany (Melville, Mullen and Slade, Melbourne and London, 1892).

Custodial history

The papers were transferred from the Zoology Department of King's College, London, by Professor Barry Cox in 1985, with a second accession in 1986.

Conditions governing access

Open, subject to signature of Reader's undertaking form, and appropriate provision of two forms of identification, to include one photographic ID.

Conditions governing reproduction

Copies, subject to the condition of the original, may be supplied from open material for research purposes only.

Requests to publish original material should be submitted to the Archives.

Language of material

  • English

Script of material

Finding aids

Draft catalogue available online. Also available in hard copy in the Archive reading room, which includes an appendix listing articles by Dendy held by the King’s College London Library.

Uploaded finding aid

Related materials

King's College Library holds reprints from various publications of articles by Denby and others concerning biology and zoology.

Related descriptions

Alternative identifier(s)

Genre access points

Rules and/or conventions used

Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000.

Script(s)

Accession area

Related genres