Robert Black was a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 of fiction

Fiction

Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...

 and nonfiction, as well as a journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

 and translator. He is chiefly remembered for his works on horse racing

Horse racing

Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...

 and a translation of François Guizot

François Guizot

François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional...

's Popular History of France, his most successful work.

Life and education

Black was born on 14 May 1829 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, the second son of Robert Black, a clerk of the same city. He matriculated from Christ's Hospital

Christ's Hospital

Christ's Hospital is an English coeducational independent day and boarding school with Royal Charter located in the Sussex countryside just south of Horsham in Horsham District, West Sussex, England...

 in 1848, and was admitted to Pembroke College

Pembroke College, Cambridge

Pembroke College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.The college has over seven hundred students and fellows, and is the third oldest college of the university. Physically, it is one of the university's larger colleges, with buildings from almost every century since its...

 at Cambridge University

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

 on 24 June 1848 at the age of 19. He took his B.A. in 1852 and M.A. in 1856. During his last years he lived a life of seclusion in London, where he died on 8 April 1915.

Career

Black commenced his writing career as a classical scholar who produced articles on current affairs and the Italian Renaissance

Italian Renaissance

The Italian Renaissance began the opening phase of the Renaissance, a period of great cultural change and achievement in Europe that spanned the period from the end of the 13th century to about 1600, marking the transition between Medieval and Early Modern Europe...

, and translations of French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 works. His translation of Guizot went through numerous editions in England and America

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

He started contributing fiction to such periodicals as the Cornhill Magazine

Cornhill Magazine

The Cornhill Magazine was a Victorian magazine and literary journal named after Cornhill Street in London.Cornhill was founded by George Murray Smith in 1860 and was published until 1975. It was a literary journal with a selection of articles on diverse subjects and serialisations of new novels...

, Macmillan's Magazine

Macmillan's Magazine

Macmillan's Magazine was a monthly British magazine from 1859 to 1907 published by Alexander Macmillan.The magazine was a literary periodical that published fiction and non-fiction works from primarily British authors. Thomas Hughes had convinced Macmillan to found the magazine. The first editor...

and Chamber's Journal in the 1860s. His work also appeared in the Athenaeum

Athenaeum (magazine)

The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....

and The Field

The Field (magazine)

The Field is the world's oldest country and field sports magazine, having been published continuously since 1853.The famous sportsman Robert Smith Surtees, the creator of Jorrocks, was the driving force behind the initial publication...

. Black's early short stories were gathered into two collections, after which he attempted a novel, Love or Lucre, published by Richard Bentley & Son in 1878. A protracted dispute over Bentley's editorial practices appears to have soured him on fiction, and though another short story collection and novel were projected nothing came of these efforts.

Black later achieved some success as an authority on horse racing, contributing articles on the subject to the St. James Gazette, the Pall Mall Gazette

Pall Mall Gazette

The Pall Mall Gazette was an evening newspaper founded in London on 7 February 1865 by George Murray Smith; its first editor was Frederick Greenwood...

, The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, and The Sportsman

The Sportsman

The Sportsman can refer to several different things including:*The Sportsman Channel*A named passenger train formerly of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway....

, and three books, the third of which was again published by Bentley.

Novels

• Love or Lucre (Richard Bentley & Son, 1878) (Google Books e-text)

Collections

• The Blackbird of Baden and Other Stories (Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, 1869)
• Lady Caroline, with Pendants (Smith, Elder & Co., 1873)

Short stories

Incomplete listing, based on the contents of The Blackbird of Baden and Lady Caroline.

• "Bar One"
• "Betwixt Two Stools"
• "The Blackbird of Baden"
• "The Fatal Bouquet"
• "Fifty Brides"
• "Friends and Rivals"
• "How Robinson Lost His Fellowship"
• "Lady Caroline"
• "Married Well"
• "An Odd Shaver"
• "Off the Scent"
• "The Pretty Butcheress"
• "The Red Nose"
• "Stubb's Luck"
• "Two Turnings to the Right"
• "An Unexpected Blessing"
• "The Verdict Against J. J."

Nonfiction

• A Memoir of Abraham Lincoln, President-Elect of the United States of America (Sampson Low, Son & Co., 1861) (Google Books e-text)
• Horse-Racing in France: A History (Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1886) (Google Books e-text)
• The Jockey Club and Its Founders, in Three Periods (Smith, Elder, 1891) (Internet Archive e-text)
• Horse-Racing in England: A Synoptical Review (Richard Bentley & Son, 1893) (Google Books e-text)

Translations

• Juste, Théodore
  Théodore Juste
  Théodore Juste was a Belgian historian and literary scholar. He became curator of the Musée royal d'antiquités, d'armures et d'artillerie in 1859.-Works:...
  
  . Memoirs of Leopold I, King of the Belgians (Sampson, Low & Marston, 1868) (Google Books e-text of v. 1; Google Books e-text of v. 2)
• Guizot, François
  François Guizot
  François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a French historian, orator, and statesman. Guizot was a dominant figure in French politics prior to the Revolution of 1848, a conservative liberal who opposed the attempt by King Charles X to usurp legislative power, and worked to sustain a constitutional...
  
  . A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times (S. Low, Marston, Low & Searle, 1872, from Histoire de France racontée à mes petits enfants, 1869) (Google Books e-text)
• Sandeau, Jules
  Jules Sandeau
  Leonard Sylvain Julien Sandeau was a French novelist.He was born at Aubusson , and was sent to Paris to study law, but spent much of his time in unruly behaviour with other students. He met George Sand, then Madame Dudevant, at Le Coudray in the house of a friend, and when she came to Paris in...
  
  . Seagull Rock (1872) (Google Books e-text)
• Cicero
  Cicero
  Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
  
  . Death No Bane: a New Translation, With Copious Illustrative Notes, of Cicero's First Tusculan Disputation
  Tusculanae Quaestiones
  The Tusculanae Disputationes , is a series of books written by Cicero, around 45 BC, attempting to popularise Stoic philosophy in Ancient Rome...
  
  (Sampson, Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1889) (Google Books e-text)