Author: Cunningham, John William
Biography:
Cunningham, John William (1780-1861: ODNB)
Born in London, he graduated from St John's College, Cambridge, and was ordained in 1803. He held a college fellowship until his marriage, in 1805, to Sophia Williams, with whom he had ten children. (With his second wife Mary Calvert, whom he married in 1827, he had four more.) After various curacies, in 1811 he became the vicar of Harrow on the Hill, where he stayed for the rest of his life. He was a popular preacher, a governor of Harrow School, and a leader of the Evangelical movement in the Church of England. As a writer he was and remains best known for a novel, The Velvet Cushion (1814), in which he described the evolution of the Church through the vicissitudes of the cushion; it earned him the nickname "Velvet Cunningham." (ODNB 2 June 2018) HJ
Other Names:
- J. W. Cunningham