Author: Bunn, Alfred
Biography:
BUNN, Alfred (1796-1860: ODNB)
He was one of thirteen children born to Benjamin Bunn, paymaster of the 39th Regiment of Foot, and his wife Martha Charlotte Thomas. They had married in Spitalfields, London, on 7 Dec. 1780 and Alfred was born on 8 Apr. 1796. Probably he, like his siblings, was baptised in St. Botolph’s, Aldgate, but no record has been located. (His parents both died in Lower Mount Street, Dublin, in 1834.) His 1816 Poems is dedicated to Leigh Hunt (q.v.) and it seems likely that Hunt had encouraged him to publish. On 2 May 1817 he married Margaret Agnes Somerville, an actor, in Marylebone, London. They had two daughters, Agnes (b 1818) and Margaret (b 1820), but the marriage did not last. In 1819-24 Bunn leased Birmingham’s Theatre Royal and in 1823-24 he was stage manager at Drury Lane theatre, London. Thus began his career of leasing and managing theatres; at different times he was responsible for two or more theatres in London and Dublin. Bunn was a talented librettist but he was treated with disdain by those who disapproved of his introduction of circus acts—lion tamers and tightrope walkers—to the theatres. In Nov. 1839 he was over-extended financially and declared bankruptcy with debts of over £23,000. However, he continued taking on leases and, in the 1840s, focused particularly on producing opera and ballet. In 1848 he won an action for damages against the singer Jenny Lind for breach of contract when she decided against performing at one of his theatres. Punch began referring to him satirically as “the poet Bunn” but got more than bargained for when he retaliated in kind with A Word with Punch (1847). His final season with Drury Lane was 1851-52. In 1852-53 he took a tour of America and, on his return, retired to Boulogne, France, where he died on 19 Dec. 1860. His will, proved on 2 May 1861, left effects of under £200. (ODNB 25 Aug. 2023; ancestry.co.uk 25 Aug. 2023; Dublin Mercantile Advertiser 8 Nov. 1839; Kilkenny Moderator 22 Mar. 1834; Walter Hamilton, The Aesthetic Movement in England [1888])