Author: Carne, John
Biography:
CARNE, John (1789-1844: ODNB)
He was born on 18 June 1789, probably at or near Truro, Cornwall, the son of William Carne (1754-1836), partner in the Cornish Cooper Company near Hayle, and in the Batten and Carne bank, and Anna Cock (1753-1822), who had married in 1780. His elder brother Joseph Carne was a noted geologist and industrialist. Although Wesleyan Methodist, the family remained Anglican (as Wesley advised) and John Carne proceeded to Queens’ College, Cambridge (Pens. 1812) and was a member of the college at various times. He did not take a degree. His father allowed him to pursue a literary career rather than business and his first publication, Poems: containing The Indian and Lazarus (1820), displayed his religious sensibility. He left England on 26 Mar. 1821 to visit the Holy Land and travelled in the Levant (Eastern Mediterranean). On his return he wrote up an account of his travels for the New Monthly Magazine, later published as Letters from the East (1826) with a dedication to Sir Walter Scott, who invited him to Abbotsford. The work proved popular but his other works were less successful: Tales of the West (1828), The Exiles of Palestine (1831), Lives of Eminent Missionaries (1832-35), Letters from Switzerland and Italy(1834). He also contributed to the Annuals. His letters, mostly to his family, were edited by Joseph Carne Ross as Letters 1813-1837 (1885). In London he delighted literary society with tales of his travels and knew Scott, Southey, Coleridge, Campbell (qq.v.), and many others. He married Leonora (“Ellen”) Lane, the daughter of a Worcester drawing-master, on 6 Nov. 1824 at Saint Vedast, City of London. There was no issue. He was ordained deacon in 1826 in Paris by Matthew Henry Thornhill Luscombe (q.v.), but never held a living. After 1835, he ceased to write and returned to Penzance where he died on 19 Apr. 1844 and was buried in Gulval churchyard. His wife, Ellen, survived him, remarried, and died in 1868. (DNB; ODNB 8 Aug. 2023; Bibliotheca Cornubiensis [1874], 1: 60-1; ancestry.co.uk 8 Aug. 2023; Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine Dec. 1822, 822, and Sept. 1836, 725-6; Penzance Gazette 24 Apr. 1844; GM June 1844, 656; Cornishman 8 May 1884; Boyle, 51) AA