Author: Brandon, Isaac
Biography:
BRANDON, Isaac (1769-1847: Bevis Marks Records; ancestry.co.uk)
The third son of Aaron and Rebecca Brandon, he was circumcised on 12 Mar. 1769 by Abraham de Paiba, mohel of the Bevis Marks Synagogue in Aldgate, London. He lived in Upper Clapton and worked at commercial warehouses owned by the Brandon and Cortissos families in Hoxton. Despite his connection to the London Anglo-Jewish community, he may have converted and married Harriet Isabella Page (1777-1864) at the parish of St. Marylebone on 10 May 1795. His first publication, Fragments: in the Manner of Sterne (1797), was his only critical and commercial success; the positively reviewed volume merited a second edition and French and German translations. His wife’s presentation copy is at Princeton University. In 1803, Brandon published Address to Jenner, on the Anniversary of his Birth, a celebratory poem of 8 pages recited on 17 May 1803 at the first Festival of the Royal Jennerian Society. In 1808, he staged and later published an opera, Kais: or, Love in the Deserts, adapted from his friend Isaac D’Israeli’s (q.v.) translated romance “Mejnoun and Leila” (1799). John Braham, a leading Jewish tenor, performed in the titular role. The opera occasioned mixed reviews, including an anti-Semitic article by George Manners (q.v.). Brandon responded to his critics in the preface to Kais, provoking further anti-Semitic attacks from Manners. In 1810, Brandon and his business partner Samuel Cortissos, now working in Leadenhall Street, went bankrupt; a year later, Brandon published Instruction: A Poem (1811). After the Kais controversy and bankruptcy, Brandon and his wife moved to France. They lived for several years in Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer but returned to England sometime after 1825 and eventually settled in Marylebone. Brandon published a final poem, Poland: A Patriotic Ode, in 1831. He died on 11 Jan. 1847 and was buried at Kensal Green on 16 Jan. GM incorrectly reported that he died at 73. (R. D. Barnett, Bevis Marks Records Part IV [1991], 98; ancestry.co.uk 3 Mar. 2022; Monthly Visitor, and New Family Magazine Jul. 1803, 283; eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk 3 Mar. 2022; Satirist, or Monthly Meteor Apr. 1808, 149; findmypast.co.uk 3 Mar. 2022; Bodleian MS Dep. Hughenden 243/2 fols. 45-52, 58-60; NLS MS 40142, fols. 271-272; GM Jun. 1847, 215) PT