Author: Ball, William
Biography:
BALL, William (1801-78: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 1 Jan. 1801 at Bridgewater, Somerset, to Quaker parents, Richard Ball, a prosperous grocer, and his wife Elizabeth Green, who had married in 1786 at Bristol. Late works, The Tribute (1862) and Notices of Kindred and Friends Departed (1865), record a myriad of family connections. He was apprenticed to an attorney in Bristol, qualified in 1828, and practised law for a few years, but did not need to work and largely devoted himself to literary pursuits. He married Anne Dale on 8 May 1834 at Tottenham (now north London). There was no issue. They lived first at Northcote House, Durdham Down, Bristol, and later--in some affluence--at Bruce Grove, Tottenham and Glen Rothay, Ambleside, hosting numerous luminaries including William Wordsworth (q.v.). Anne Ball died on 11 May 1861, aged 71. He died at the Imperial Hotel, Stirling Street, Aberdeen, on 30 July 1878 from a stroke, leaving an estate of £60,000. The works listed here reflect his religious character but The Crowning of the British Living Poetesses (1827) is likely to be of most interest to modern readers. He also contributed verse to Frederic Shoberl's annual, Forget-me-not, in 1828, 1829, and 1832. (Annual Monitor for 1878, 8-54, and for 1861, 12-17; ancestry.co.uk 20 Oct. 2022; Friends’ Books, 163-4; Evelyn Noble Armitage, The Quaker Poets of Great Britain and Ireland [1896], 17-19; Scotland’s People; Boyle, 15) AA