Author: Birch, George
Biography:
BIRCH, George (c. 1733-1803: ancestry.co.uk)
Corroboration is wanting but the author of the anonymously published Love Elegies was almost certainly George Birch, eldest son of James Birch of Coventry (1697-1772) and his wife Jane Owen. His uncle was Sir Thomas Birch, a judge. No birth record has been located but he was admitted to Clare College, Cambridge, on 12 Nov. 1750 and to the Middle Temple on 28 Nov. 1750. He was called to the bar on 9 Feb. 1756. George Birch seems to have been well-known in contemporary London literary circles and one of his poems “On Receiving a Letter from Mr. Cambridge [Richard Owen Cambridge, q.v.]” was frequently reprinted. He married Mary Newell of Henley on Thames by license on 11 Dec. 1770. They had four sons and one daughter. He died at his estate of St. Leonard’s Hill, Berkshire, and was buried in the churchyard in nearby Clewer on 12 Apr. 1803. (ancestry.co.uk 17 Apr. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 17 Apr. 2023; Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple 1 [1949], 342) SR