Author: Carr, John
Biography:
CARR, John (1771-1832: ancestry.com)
The popular but much-maligned travel writer John Carr was born in London on 6 Dec 1771 (not 1772 as elsewhere) and baptized on 2 Jan. 1772 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. Doubt has been expressed about his parentage. Information in his and his father’s wills, however, and references in his Poems, prove that he was one of the five children of Benjamin Carr (1731-1780)—musical instrument maker at the Violin & Hautboy, Old Round Court, Strand; that his mother was his father’s wife, Elizabeth (Smith) Carr (b 1731, d c. 1810); and that his uncle Joseph and cousin Benjamin were notable music publishers in Philadelphia. When he entered Rugby School, in 1785, though his mother was still alive (she lived past her seventieth year), he is said to have been the ward of his sister Ann’s husband, William Hodges; Hodges was James Cook’s official artist on his second voyage. Having first practiced law in Devon, from about 1806 Carr had chambers in the Middle Temple at 2 Garden Court. In London on 8 May 1811, he married Mariana King (d 1821) of Goldingham Hall, Essex. There were no children by the marriage. Though they sold in great numbers, reviewers—notably Walter Scott (q.v.) in the QR—dismissed his travel books as vapid and stylistically inferior. Washington Irving reflected the consensus that Carr’s books were “gossiping … slip slop” entertainments. A parody of his work by Edward Dubois, My Pocket Book, or Hints for a “Ryghte Merrie and Conceitede” Tour, to be called “The Stranger in Ireland” (1807), caused several houses to decline to publish Carr’s account of his recent travels in Scotland. He failed in his suit for libel against Dubois’s publishers. In the Court of King’s Bench on 25 July 1808, the jury agreed with the presiding judge that Dubois had caricatured the author, not the person. Embittered, in his will he referred to “the dreadful wrongs I have sustained … my fortune greatly reduced ….” He died 17 July 1832 at his residence at 7 New Norfolk Street, Grosvenor Square. The tomb in which he and his wife are buried is in the chancel of All Saints church, Great Faringdon, Oxfordshire. Carr was knighted on 9 Dec. 1806 by the lord lieutenant of Ireland. (ODNB 2 Oct. 2023; ancestry.com 3 Oct. 2023; PROB 11/1063; PROB 11/1804; GM 102 [1832], 182) JC
Other Names:
- Sir John Carr