Author: Agg, John
Biography:
AGG, John (1783-1855: ancestry.com)
pseudonyms Humphrey HEDGEHOG, Jeremiah JUVENAL, Peter PINDAR, Jr.
The eldest son of John and Ann Agg, he was born on 29 Nov. 1783 in Evesham, Worcestershire. He began a colourful career as a writer, printer, bookseller, and publisher in Evesham and Bristol. A satire against Henry Dundas (1742-1811), A Consolatory Epistle (Evesham, 1805), is his first known publication under the pseudonym Humphrey Hedgehog. He subsequently turned his hand to many kinds of hack writing, including fiction, for example MacDermot, or, The Irish Chieftain (1810), The Royal Sufferer (1811), and A Month at Brussels (1815). Shoberl (1816) describes him as having been recently imprisoned for a libel: that was in London in 1814, when he was the editor of a periodical, Towntalk. In 1818 he emigrated with his brother Thomas to the US, living first in Philadelphia, where he published The Ocean Harp, then in Burlington VT and finally in Washington DC. He married Elizabeth Blackford (1800-54) in Grace Church, Washington, on 27 Dec. 1820; the marriage appears to have been childless. As an official parliamentary reporter from 1825 to 1837 he recorded the debates in Congress. He died in Washington DC on 19 Apr. 1855 and is buried there in Rock Creek Cemetery. A collection devoted to him and his works from 1813 onwards was acquired by Duke University in 2017. The attribution of some of the pseudonymous works to Agg is still largely speculative, based on cross-reference of works "by the author of" to other works of more certain attribution. ("Guide to the Harold Moser Collection," David M. Rubinstein Rare Books & Manuscript Library, Duke University; Shoberl; ancestry.com 27 Nov. 2019, 26 June 2025; findmypast 26 June 2025; New York Evening Post 28 Dec. 1820; EN2) HJ