Author: Becket, Andrew
Biography:
BECKET, Andrew (1749-1843: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 11 Sept. 1749, the only son of the Irish-born bookseller Thomas Becket, of Pall-Mall, and his wife, whose name is unknown but may have been Smith. He was educated by Dr. Rose at his school in Chiswick and later by the Rev. Dr. Pollock at his academy in Great Windmill Street, Westminster. He displayed a talent for classical and modern languages and wrote a comedy based on Rousseau’s Emilewhen only fourteen. He was apprenticed to William Strahan, stationer and bookseller, in 1765. He was later a friend of David Garrick, who secured for him the post of vice-librarian to the royal family. In 1782, he obtained a post at Somerset House from which he retired on a small pension in 1822 after forty years’ service. He had earlier contributed to the British and Monthly Reviews for nearly ten years and was paid £45 for 280 articles to the Monthly by Ralph Griffiths. He first came to widespread attention with his travel work, A Trip to Holland (1786). His work on Shakespeare was widely respected from A Concordance to Shakespeare (1787) to Shakespeare Himself Again: or the Language of the Poet Asserted (1815) which was much admired by Robert Southey (q.v.). Besides the works listed here, he also wrote a verse tragedy, Lavinia, and a masque, The Genii. Two short prose works, Reformation (a satire on atheism, 1787) and Public Prosperity (a proposal for helping the poor, 1813) are worth another look. Late in life he went blind and was fond of quoting Milton. He died on 19 Jan. 1843, aged 93, at Belmont Place, Wandsworth Road, Lambeth. He seems never to have married and left a small estate to his sister Mary Stalker, with William Beattie and Thomas Campbell (qq.v.) as executors. (ancestry.co.uk 11 Dec. 2021; Watkins, 19; MH 23 Jan. 1843; GM Mar. 1843, 329; William Beattie, "Biographical Notice of the Author" prefixed to Andrew Becket, Dramatic and Prose Miscellanies [1838]; Spenserians; B. C. Nangle, Index to the Monthly Review 1749-1789 [1934], 1790-1815 [1955]) AA