Author: Conder, Josiah
Biography:
CONDER, Josiah (1789-1855: ODNB)
His father, Thomas Conder, was a map engraver and bookseller with premises in London; his grandfather, Dr John Conder, was president of the non-conformist academy, Homerton college. Thomas Conder’s wife was a distant relation, Elizabeth Conder; Josiah was their sixth child. He was born at Falcon Street, Aldersgate, London, on 17 Sept. 1789. He suffered from smallpox and scarlet fever in early childhood and lost the sight of his right eye. Conder was educated only until the age of thirteen when he began working in his father’s shop but he read widely and particularly admired the poetry of Edward Young, William Cowper, and James Montgomery (qq.v.). When he was sixteen his poem “The Withered Oak” was published in the Athenaeum. Through his father’s publishing work he met many literary figures including Ann and Jane Taylor (qq.v.) and it may have been Ann who encouraged him to submit verse to The Minor’s Pocketbook; his contributions are identified as by “J. C. B.” With the Taylors, Jacob George Strutt, and Joan Elizabeth Thomas (q.v.) he first published Associate Minstrels in 1810; it is dedicated to James Montgomery. (The poems marked “S.” in the volume are attributed by Eustace R. Conder to J. G. Strutt, the artist and translator; two of Strutt’s translations are in this database.) In Dec. 1811 Conder took over his father’s bookselling business and three years later he purchased the non-conformist periodical the Eclectic Review which he published and edited. On 8 Feb. 1815 he married Joan Elizabeth Thomas; they had six sons (two died in infancy) and a daughter. The family lived in St. Paul’s Churchyard. Conder gave up business in 1819 and they moved for a time to the country, settling first near St. Alban’s, Hertfordshire, and later at Chenies, Buckinghamshire. Conder managed the Eclectic until 1837 when he left to focus more on the Patriot, a liberal weekly which Conder edited until Nov. 1855. At the time of his death on 27 Dec. 1855 he was living in St. John’s Wood, London; he was buried in Abney Park cemetery on 3 Jan. 1856. Conder’s other works include On Protestant Non-Conformity (1818 and 1822), a series called The Modern Traveller (1825-29), and The Congregational Hymn-Book (1834 and 1836). (ODNB 28 Jan. 2024; ancestry.co.uk 28 Jan. 2024; Eustace R. Conder, Josiah Conder: A Memoir [1857]; M. Levy, Family Authorship and Romantic Print Culture [2008])