Author: Bull, John
Biography:
BULL, John (fl 1823-4)
The two books of verse by this author that are included in this database were both issued in the same year. He also published “The Elgin Gallery,” a poem, in the London Magazine in 1823. An afterword in The Museum gives some biographical clues: it is addressed from Spa Fields; at about the time he began writing it, his father died; and, as he finished writing it, his close friend, the Rev. Stephen Morell, died. These clues, however, prove insufficient reliably to identify him. Stephen Morell was born in Little Baddow, Essex, in 1800 and trained at the Homerton academy for dissenting ministers. He was ordained at Norwich in 1824 and died at his father’s house in Essex in the same year. Bull was also a friend of another dissenting minister who trained at Homerton and, like Morell, died young: Joseph Brown Jefferson (1803-25). These facts suggest that Bull too was a dissenter. His address, Spa Fields, was the location of Lady Huntingdon’s chapel and it is possible that, while he was not himself ordained, he served in some capacity there. The afterword in The Museum mentions the “duties of his sphere” but does not specify what those are. Nothing more is known. (J. Whitridge, Memoirs and Remains of J. B. Jefferson [1826]; Thomas Binney, A Memoir of the Rev. Stephen Morell [1826]) SR