Dr. George Calvert Holland: 'George Calvert Holland was too remarkable a man to be passed over with a mere mention. The perseverance which enabled him to triumph over the disadvantages of a lowly origin, the scholarship which he snatched by his own hard industry, the romantic though painful vicissitudes of his life, and his genial personal presence alike point to him as an illustrious figure in the history of Sheffield during the earlier half of the present century. Holland was born at Pitsmoor, when Pitsmoor was an outlying hamlet, and salmon were speared in the then clear waters of the Don. His love of the classics caused him often to prolong his readings through the night. But he became dissatisfied with translations ; he burned to read Virgil and Petrarch in their native tongue. Under difficulties which had about them strange elements of the grotesque, he—the sawmaker's son—set himself to acquire Latin, French, and Italian, and made such extraordinary progress as to become a marvel amongst all his acquaintances'.
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Sheffield branch of the Classical Association, founded in 1920
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