Author: Colls, John Henry
Biography:
COLLS, John Henry (1764-1802: Poems 1804; N&Q)
He was born in Jan. 1764 at Letheringsett, near Holt, Norfolk, the son of William Colls, a prosperous Quaker miller, and his wife Hannah Jacques, who had married in Lynn in 1752. He was educated at the Grammar School in Holt and in 1779 apprenticed to a Quaker leather-cutter. In 1785 he inherited "between five and six Hundred pounds," abandoned his trade, and devoted himself to literature. An early poem, A Poetical Epistle to a Friend in the Country (Norwich 1784) was advertised in the Norwich Mercury (6 Nov. 1784) but no copy appears to have survived and it was not included in the posthumous Poems (1804). Remarks on the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, in a Letter to James Boswell, Esq. (1785) signed "Verax" and dated 27 Oct. 1785 is now known to be by him, based on his letters to Edward Jerningham (q.v.) in the Huntington Library. (Jerningham, to whom Colls addressed The Poet in 1785, is the E. J. who edited Poems [1804] and the source of most of the information about his life.) In 1788 he wrote a poem on his sister Sarah’s death (which enables the identification of his parents). Two further poems are of historical significance: A Poetical Epistle Addressed to Miss Wollstonecraft (1791) and "The Negro’s Appeal" added to his Ode to Peace (1801). A long poem, "The Moralist," reprinted in Poems (1804), first appeared in the Norfolk Chronicle in seven instalments 13 Feb.-10 Apr. 1790. He also wrote a number of plays, several of which were never printed and seem to have had short runs, with The Africans’ Appeal to Britons for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1792) being perhaps of most interest to modern readers. He married the actress Sarah Titter at St. James’s, Bath, on 4 June 1789. They had several children and Poems (1804) was originally advertised soliciting subscribers for the benefit of his son, Edward Cooper Colls. His wife died in May 1800 and he then married a widow, Sarah Case, on 3 Sept. 1801 at Great Fransham, Norfolk. He died at Gooderstone on 21 Dec. 1802 and was buried at Great Fransham. At the time of his death he was a Lieutenant in the 24th Regiment of Foot. (ancestry.co.uk 11 May 2021; findmypast.co.uk 11 May 2021; European Magazine Sept. 1788, 232; Norfolk Chronicle 13 June 1789, 21 Apr. 1792, 1 Jan. 1803, 14 May 1803, 22 Dec. 1804; David Chandler, N&Q 1 Dec. 1995; Highfill) AA
Other Names:
- John Colls