Author: Beresford, Benjamin
Biography:
BERESFORD, Benjamin (1750-1819: Shelley)
He was baptised on 13 Oct. 1750 at Bewdley, Worcestershire, the son of James Bewdley and his wife Elizabeth (Betty) Dugard, who had married the previous year. He was educated at St. Mary Hall (later incorporated into Oriel College), Oxford (matric. 1772) but did not take a degree. After Oxford he held curacies in London and Worcester. On 1 Nov. 1780 he eloped with Sydney Hamilton (1765-1827) of Kilyleagh Castle, Co. Down, Ireland, via Gretna Green to Ireland. They later married in London at St. Katharine Cree church on 11 Dec. 1780 and had three children, including Hamilton Sydney Beresford (q.v.). She was the sister of Archibald Hamilton Rowan (1751-1834), a founder of the United Irishmen who had narrowly escaped execution during the 1798 rebellion. The furore the elopement caused led him to serve a month in the Châtelet prison in Paris and over two years in the King’s Bench in London. He gave his version of events in A Narrative of Circumstances attending Mr. Beresford’s Marriage with Miss Hamilton (1782) and Appendix to Mr. Beresford’s Narrative (1788). From Paris in June 1792 he applied to the Royal Literary Fund for assistance and received £50. The marriage seems to have run into difficulties and by 1796 he had gone to Berlin where he was tutor to Queen Luise of Prussia. He became an important source of our early knowledge of German Romantic literature and produced various valuable collections, The German Erato (1797), The German Songster (1798), The Russian Troubadour (1816), and Der Schottische Barde (1817). He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Liberal Arts by the University of Halle in 1801. In 1803 he was invited to teach at the newly-established Imperial University of Dorpat (now Tartu). He later moved to St. Petersburg and then to Moscow where he was Chaplain to the English Congregation. By 1815 he had returned to Berlin as instructor in English at the new Imperial University where he gave courses on Shakespeare in 1816-19. He died in Berlin on 29 Apr. 1819. (Philip Allison Shelley, “Benjamin Beresford, Literary Ambassador,” PMLA 51 [1936], 476-501; H. Nolte and L. Ideler, Handbuch der Englischen Sprache und Literatur, Poetischer Theil [1811], 679-83; ancestry.co.uk 16 Nov. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 16 Nov. 2022; CCEd 16 Nov. 2022; RLF 17; edpopehistory.co.uk; Leipziger Literatur-Zeitung ,20 May 1820; Globe 14 Nov. 1827) AA
Other Names:
- B. Beresford