Author: ASHWORTH, Richard Whitfield
Biography:
ASHWORTH, Richard Whitfield (1803-26: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 5 Nov. 1803 at Strawberry Hill House, Pendleton, Manchester, the eldest of ten children of Richard John Daventry Ashworth (1772-1828), barrister, landowner, and fine art collector, and his wife Anne Macaulay (1781-1863), who had married in Huddersfield in 1801. His younger brother Percy Macaulay Ashworth (q.v.) was also a poet. His sister Anne Susannah married the Rev. Hugh Stowell (q.v.). He was educated at Manchester Grammar and then proceeded to Trinity College Cambridge (Pensioner 1820) before migrating to Brasenose College Oxford (matric. 1823). He did not take a degree. Poor health may have interrupted his education. He died on 29 May 1826 at Cheltenham and was buried there. Leisure Hours (1823) was printed at Bishop’s Stortford on the Hertfordshire/Essex border. It is not known why he was there. He dedicated the volume to his friend William Marriott Smith Marriott (q.v.). They had probably become friends at Trinity in 1820. The volume consists of thirteen undistinguished sonnets, imitations of Byron, seascape poems, and minor topographical poems on established Romantic locations such as “Fanny of Grasmere” and “Lines Written from Snowdon.” (ancestry.co.uk 17 Apr. 2023; Admission Register of Manchester School [1874], 3.1: 66; OUCH 3 June 1826) AA