Author: Denovan, John C.
Biography:
DENOVAN, John C. (1795-1827: MSM)
MSM gives the year of his birth as 1798, but 1795 is correct. He was born on 23 July 1795 (baptised 29 July) at South Leith to Jeremiah and Elizabeth (Alexander) Denovan. The had married at South Leith on 9 Dec. 1789. John sought a sea-faring life and entered a sloop of war as an honorary midshipman; his father’s death, however, required him to return home after just one voyage and he was apprenticed to a grocer. At about this time, he became friendly with William and Robert Chambers (q.v.) and his radical politics were expressed in a short-lived periodical, Patriot. Denovan became a coffee-roaster in Edinburgh. The 1825 Edinburgh directory shows him at 14 Calton street, a corn warehouse. MSM states that he was encouraged to write by Walter Scott (q.v.) but no surviving correspondence has been located, nor has a record been located for his death. (MSM; ancestry.co.uk 13 May 2019, 3 Aug. 2025) SR
Other Names:
- J. C. Denovan
- J. Denovan