Calderon family papers

George Leslie Calderon was an author, translator, and director. He was the son of the Victorian painter Philip Hermogenes Calderon and Clara Storey, sister of the painter George Adolphus Storey. Following university studies, he decided to learn Russian. He trained as a barrister but failed to find work in the field; he left for Russia in October 1895 where he taught, worked as a journalist, and studied. Returning to England in 1897, he learned several other Slavonic languages and in 1900 became an assistant librarian at the British Museum while pursuing research into Slavonic folklore and publishing many stories, articles and translations. He left the British Museum in 1903 to write full-time. Calderon was the first person to translate into English and successfully direct a full-length play by Anton Chekhov (The Seagull); a posthumous production of his translation of The Cherry Orchard established Chekhov as a force in the English theater. Calderon enlisted in the British Army at the age of 45; he was killed at the battle of Achi Baba on 4 June 1915.

Katharine Calderon (1867-1950), known as "Kittie", was born in Donegal; she was a gifted artist and studied at the A.S. Cope and J.W. Nicol School of Painting. In 1895 she married the barrister Archibald Ripley, who had been at Trinity College Oxford with George Calderon and was an uncle of Percy Lubbock. Ripley died in 1898; in 1900 Katharine married George Calderon and worked as his literary agent. Their Hampstead home became an artistic and intellectual gathering place. During the First World War she volunteered as a Red Cross nurse. When her husband George died in 1919, she threw herself into the publication of his works.