Author: Bast, A. P.
Biography:
BAST, A. P. (fl 1818)
Searches for the name A. P. Bast draw a blank in public records and newspapers. However, the European Magazine and London Review reported in Jan. 1818 that “Anthony Power…is now going about the town to solicit subscriptions for a Poem…to be published under the name (before used by him) of A. P. Best.” If for Best is meant Bast and the poem was London, the author was Anthony Power who specialised in swindling booksellers. Power was born in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, to Francis and Ann Power and baptised on 14 Sept. 1751. Possibly he was the Anthony Power who served in the Dragoon Guards in the 1770s-1790s. On 20 Feb. 1789 he married Anne Bradley at St. Paul’s Covent Garden in London. She died from an overdose of laudanum which she took in his presence at their home in St. John’s, Clerkenwell, in 1815. Power was in and out of prison on charges of swindling and theft (on one occasion he was charged with stealing clothes from a workhouse). He died in the workhouse at Henley-on-Thames and was buried on 24 Feb. 1818. No trace has been found of The Reformer, claimed by him on the title page of London. (ancestry.co.uk 16 Nov. 2022; European Magazine and London Review 73 [1818] 67; Bell’s Weekly Messenger 4 June 1815; Morning Post 28 Mar. 1815; Oxford University and City Herald 8 Feb. 1817) SR