author
Robert Blachford Mansfield
1824–1908
A lively Victorian memoirist and sportsman, this English writer is best remembered for vivid books about boating journeys and school life. His work mixes travel, personal recollection, and a strong feel for the customs of 19th-century England.
1 Audiobook
School-life at Winchester College : or, the reminiscences of a Winchester junior under the old régime, 1835-40.
by Robert Blachford Mansfield
About the author
Born on February 1, 1824, at Rowner in Hampshire, he was educated at Winchester College and University College, Oxford. He was the younger brother of Charles Blachford Mansfield, and later wrote with an easy, personal style that drew on both family memory and his own experiences.
He led what contemporary sources describe as a roving life in Scotland and on the Continent. An enthusiastic sportsman as well as an author, he was known as an oarsman and produced popular accounts of boating expeditions on German rivers, including The Log of the Water-Lily and The Water-Lily on the Danube. He also wrote School-Life at Winchester College, a memoir of student life in the 1830s and 1840s, and later published the autobiographical New and Old Chips from an Old Block.
His interests reached beyond writing alone. Sources from his time note his love of shooting and suggest he was among the early English enthusiasts for golf, helping introduce the game in several English towns after learning it at Pau. He died on April 29, 1908.