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Author: Bland, Robert

Biography:

BLAND, Robert (1779-1825: ancestry.co.uk)

He was the eldest of four children of Robert Bland (1741-1816), man-midwife and physician, and his second wife, Dolly Nash (1752-1825). They had married at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden,  Westminster, London, in 1775. His father had an extensive practice in Westminster. There is no baptism record extant but a birthdate of 1779 at Westminster seems most likely. He was educated at Harrow and Pembroke College Cambridge (matric. 1797, BA 1802). Ordained deacon (1801) and priest (1809), he was curate of Farningham, Kent (1801-8), and assistant master at Harrow (1802-8), where Byron (q.v.) was one of his pupils.  Byron extricated him from a duel with a guards officer who ran off with Bland’s mistress; he also praised him in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809) (lines 881-90). He became curate of Prittlewell, Essex, in 1813 and exchanged it for that of Kenilworth, Warwickshire, in 1816. He continued teaching privately and prepared pupils for Oxford and Cambridge. He married Eliza Tayler on 27 Sept. 1813, at her parish of All Saints, Hastings, Sussex. They had six children. He was considered a very able classical scholar. His Elements of Latin Hexameters and Pentameters (1817) went through many editions and was widely used. With John Herman Merivale (q.v.), he produced Translations, Chiefly from the Greek Anthology, with Tales and Miscellaneous Poems (1806), and he was the writer of the important forty-nine page preface to and lead editor of Collections from the Greek Anthology (1813). Along with Anna Plumptre he translated the Historical and Literary Memoirs and Anecdotes of Grimm and Diderot (1814). He died on 12 Mar. 1825 at Leamington, Warwickshire, and was buried at Kenilworth. His widow and six children were left in straitened circumstances. Friends raised a subscription for them and she was also awarded £50 by the RLF in Apr. 1825. (ODNB 10 Mar. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 10 Mar. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 10 Mar. 2023; Francis Hodgson, “Memoir,” Literary Gazette 23 Apr. 1825, 268-9; London Courier 23 Mar. 1825; GM Apr. 1825, 379, and June Supp., 1825, 646; RLF 1/537; Lord Byron and His Times, lordbyron.org) AA

 

Books written (5):

London/ Cambridge/ Oxford: Phillips/ Deighton/ Parker, 1806
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808
2nd edn. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme; T. Reynolds, 1809
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and T. Reynolds and Son, 1809