Author: Dell, John
Biography:
DELL, John (1757-1810: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised at St. Mary the Virgin, Dover, the eldest of eight children of John Dell and his wife Sarah Henrietta Barham, who underwent a clandestine marriage at Mayfair Chapel, London, on 24 Jan. 1754. Such marriages away from their respective parishes with no notices were considered irregular and ceased in Mar. 1754 when Hardwicke’s Marriage Act 1753 came into force. He became lame at eight and was bedridden for eleven years, during which time he developed a passion for poetry. The volume listed here is rare, with the only known copy at the University of Illinois Library at Urbana. He contributed several poems to the European Magazine under the signature “Rusticus” and to local Canterbury newspapers. He died on 29 Sept. 1810 at his cottage “Mon Repos” at Sturry, near Canterbury, and was buried on 4 Oct. 1810 at St. Mary the Virgin, Dover. He must have known he was dying as he wrote his own epitaph. His library was sold off shortly after his death. He left behind various manuscripts and there were hopes of publishing them but nothing seems to have materialised. (ancestry.co.uk 29 Sept. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 29 Sept. 2022; The Man of Kent 23 Jan. 1819; Kentish Gazette 5 and 16 Oct. 1810; E. L. de Montluzin, “Attributions of Authorship in the European Magazine 1782-1826,” bsuva.org) AA