Poet, critic, editor. Educated at Manchester grammar school. Articled to solicitor; began study for the bar; for two years a student at Cambridge. Both his legal studies and his university career ended by his sudden prominence as poet on the appearance of "Australia". Contributed to annuals; edited the annuals Friendship's Offering and Amaranth. In 1831 began writing for Athenaeum; editor of Athenaeum, 1846-1853. Later contributed to Art Journal. Published The Poetical Sketch-Book, 1829; Illustrations of Modern Sculpture, 1832 (some parts not by him); The Book of Christmas, 1837. Compiled anthology of nineteenth-century poetry, The English Helicon, 1841, in which he included several of his own poems and some by Eleanora Louisa Montagu (under Hervey), who later became his wife.

Author: Anne Lohrli; © University of Toronto Press, 1971.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography