Author: Crowe, Eyre Evans
Biography:
CROWE, Eyre Evans (1799-1868: ODNB)
He was born on 20 Mar. 1799 at Redbridge, Hampshire, and baptised at Eling on 9 Apr., the only child of David Crowe (1775-1809), Captain in the 23rd Regiment of the East Indian army, and his wife Emma (Amy) Hayman, who had married in 1797. His mother died a year after he was born, possibly due to the effects of childbirth. He was educated at Carlow, co. Carlow, Ireland, and entered Trinity College Dublin as pensioner in 1812, aged thirteen, where he won a prize for an English poem. He left college without taking a degree to go to London to pursue journalism and there published the poems listed here, The Pleasures of Melancholy; and A Saxon Tale (1819). In 1822 he travelled to Italy and described the experience in a series of letters to Blackwood’s Magazine. He then produced a series of novels: Vittoria Colonna (1825), To-day in Ireland (1825), The English in Italy (1825), The English in France (1828), Yesterday in Ireland (1829) and The English at Home (1830). He witnessed the revolutionary activity of 1830 in France and became the Paris correspondent of the Morning Chronicle. He returned briefly to London in 1832 and applied to the Royal Literary Fund for assistance in May, informing them that he had hoped to get £200 for his latest novel from Colburn & Bentley but received nothing. He was awarded £40. He returned to Paris and reapplied in May 1833 and again received £40. He remained in France and would later write several works on modern French history. He returned to England in 1844 and joined the Daily News in 1846, becoming its editor 1849-51. After travelling to the Levant and Mediterranean to report on the Eastern Question, he wrote The Greek and the Turk (1853). He died on 25 Feb. 1868 at 56 Beaumont Street, Marylebone, Westminster, London, and was buried at Kensal Green. He married first Margaret Archer, on 20 Oct. 1823 in Dublin. They had at least six children. After her death in Paris in 1853, he married Frances Jane Milne on 7 Nov. 1854 at St. John the Evangelist, Lambeth, south London, with possible further, as yet untraced, issue. (ODNB 22 Feb. 2023; DNB; ancestry.co.uk 22 Feb. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 22 Feb. 2023; RLF, 1/730; Illustrated London News 29 Feb., 7 Mar. 1868; EN2, 598-9, 642, 682) AA