Author: Bishop, James
Biography:
BISHOP, James (fl 1817-30)
His is a common name and no public records that can be linked with certainty to this author have been found. Tbe title page of his Pathetic and Consolatory Ode describes him as “author of several miscellaneous poems” but probably these were issued in periodical publications or in ephemeral broadsheets. He applied to the RLF for relief on 11 Nov. 1818 and his letter states that he had received £5 from the fund in 1817; no correspondence from the earlier application has survived. In 1818 he described himself as labouring as a journeyman, unable to devote himself to poetry, and with a wife and young family to support. That letter is dated from Strand, London, but subsequent letters are from a succession of addresses in Lambeth. On 9 Dec.1818 he sent the RLF some doggerel verse, “The Poet and the Rupert St. Printer.” His letter of 12 Jan. 1825 enclosed a printed poem, “Tribute of Respect to the Memory of …the Duke of Kent,” and the fund rewarded him with £5. Another application from the same year mentions his Brief Defence of the Christian Religion, confirming that both the 1817 Ode and the 1825 Defence were by the same man. A final letter, from Prospect Place, Lambeth, is dated 9 Feb. 1830. No other information has been located. (RLF file 370) SR