Author: Atherstone, Edwin
Biography:
ATHERSTONE, Edwin (1788-1872: ODNB)
Born in Nottingham, he was the thirteenth of fifteen children of Hugh Atherstone, a dyer, and his wife Ann Green. He was educated at the Fulneck Moravian School in Yorkshire and on his return to Nottingham he worked as a music teacher. He claimed to have married Mary Wainwright Pearson in about 1807 but there was no legal ceremony. They had four children: a son who died young and three daughters. Atherstone met or corresponded with various literary men—Coleridge, Southey, Scott, Moore, and John Hunt (qq.v.)—and he knew the artist John Martin who provided illustrations for A Midsummer Day’s Dream and The Fall of Nineveh. In 1830 he published a three-volume novel, The Sea-Kings in England. At about the same time the family moved to London. Although the ODNB states that he and Mary separated after she attempted suicide, correspondence held in the Somerset Heritage Centre indicates that Mary in fact died by suicide in about 1830. The 1841 Census shows Atherstone living with two of his daughters in Union Place, Marylebone; his occupation is given as “professor of elocution.” He also ran two art galleries. However he did not prosper financially and in 1855 he made the first of five applications to the RLF. Over time he was awarded a total of £200. In 1858 he was given a civil list pension of £75, increased to £100 in 1860. One of his applications to the RLF mentions the loss of property valued at “upwards of £8000.” Atherstone moved to Bath in the final year of his life and he died there at 19 Macaulay Buildings on 29 Jan. 1872; he was buried in Bath Abbey Cemetery. Mary Elizabeth Atherstone asked the RLF for support after his death but was denied on the grounds that she could not produce her parents’ marriage certificate. Atherstone’s other writings include The Handwriting on the Wall: A Story (1858) and Israel in Egypt: A Poem (1861). The Somerset Heritage Centre holds an extensive collection of his family papers and letters that he received from various literary friends. (ODNB 12 Sept. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 12 Sept. 2022; Southwest Heritage Trust: Somerset Archive Catalogue; RLF file 1373; Saint James’s Chronicle 17 June 1828)