Author: Deacon, William Frederick
Biography:
DEACON, William Frederick (1799-1845: ODNB)
The eldest child of William Wranius Deacon (1772-1855), a merchant, and his wife Caroline King (1777-1816), he was born on 26 July at Caroline Place, Mecklenburgh Square, London, and baptised on 3 Sept. 1799 at St. Pancras. At the age of 11 he was sent to Reading School where he met Thomas Noon Talfourd (q.v.) who was later to write the memoir of Deacon published with a posthumous novel, Annette, in 1852. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on 16 July 1817 and migrated to St. Catherine’s Hall in Oct. 1817. His father intended him for a church position but Deacon did not take a degree and, to the displeasure of his father, he left the university and went to London in hope of establishing a literary career. His sole support was an annuity of £100 from his grandmother which ended with her death in 1829. In 1820 he began writing for a new periodical, The London Magazine and Monthly and Dramatic Review, and the publishers later appointed him as editor to another short-lived venture, The Déjeuné, but in 1821 Deacon became ill and left London to settle near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire, Wales. He returned to London in 1822 and published sketches and tales as The Inn-keeper’s Album (1823). This was followed in 1824 by Warreniana, a collection of prose and verse parodies of contemporary writers including William Gifford, Southey, Coleridge, Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth (qq.v.). The conceit of the book, which was well-received critically, is that the pieces were intended as puffs for Robert Warren’s popular boot blacking. November Nights, another collection of tales and sketches, was published in 1826. On 18 Mar. 1827 Deacon married Alice Parkin (b 1806) at St. Mary’s, Newington; they had two sons and one daughter. Deacon published a two-volume novel, Exile of Erin, in 1835 and he began writing literary criticism for The Sun in 1840. He also wrote articles for Blackwood’s Magazine. He died at home at Malvern Terrace, Islington, on 18 Mar. 1845. His will named Alice Deacon as his executor and sole inheritor; it was proved in Apr. 1845, the same month in which she applied to the RLF for support. She was awarded £50. (ODNB 8 July 2024; ancestry.co.uk 8 July 2024; T. N. Talfourd, “Memoir, Annette [1852]; ACAD; G. Stones and J. Strachan, Parodies of the Romantic Age [2020]; RLF file 1114) SR
Other Names:
- W. F. Deacon