Author: Claris, John Chalk
Biography:
CLARIS, John Chalk (1796-1866: ODNB)
Pseudonym Arthur Brooke
He was born on 18 Oct. 1796, the youngest of three children of James Claris, stationer, bookseller, and printer, and Catherine Chalk, who were Quakers but married at St. Alphege, Canterbury in 1791. He was educated at the King’s School, Canterbury (1806-11). He may have been a schoolmaster in early life. Although he published as Arthur Brooke, his authorship was widely known and he sometimes signed prefaces with his real initials, J. C. C. He was an early admirer of Shelley (q.v.) and was probably the reviewer from Canterbury of Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam (1818) in The Man of Kent (21 Nov. 1818) and addressed a sonnet to him in Retrospection (1822). His Elegy on the Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1822), clearly indebted to Shelley’s Adonais (1821), was dedicated to Leigh Hunt (q.v.) and also brought him to the attention of Mary Shelley who gave him the manuscript of “Prince Athanase.” Claris married Briseis Chalk (1801-23), a cousin, at Newington, Lambeth, south London, on 15 Jan. 1822. They had one son, whom he named Percy Brooke Claris after Shelley and his own pseudonym. She died in Aug. 1823 and was buried at Dover. He paid tribute to her in a letter to Leigh Hunt, 29 July 1824 (BL). He later married Ellen Swainson (1811-92) on 27 June 1832 at Harbledown, Kent. They went on to have six sons and five daughters. Around 1826 Claris became editor of the Kent Herald and worked there for forty years. He published no more volumes of verse but contributed a few political poems supporting Catholic Emancipation and the Reform Bill to his newspaper. He died at Best Lane, Canterbury, on 10 Jan. 1866 and was buried at Saint Dunstan’s, leaving a small estate of under £300. His son, Percy Brooke Claris (1822-1903), became a solicitor and left a small fortune of just under £25,000. (ODNB 2 July 2023; DNB; ancestry.co.uk 2 July 2023; findmypast.co.uk 2 July 2023; King’s School, Canterbury Register 1750-1859, king’s-school co.uk; Maidstone Journal 3 July 1832; Kent Herald 11 and 18 June 1866; GM Mar. 1866, 439; N&Q 3 Aug. 1872, 95, and Mar. 1990, 30-1; Athenaeum 4 July 1885; BL, Ashley MS A4133, ff. 124-25b; Donald H. Reiman, “Introduction” to Claris Poems [1978], v-ix) AA
Other Names:
- Arthur Brooke