Author: Dey, Richard Varick
Biography:
DEY, Richard Varick (1801-37: WBIS)
pseudonym Uriah Derick D'Arcy
Richard Varick Dey is the most likely candidate for authorship of the works published under the anagram of his name in 1819--a Gothic novel and two magazine poems--but he is not the only one. As Bray explains, the Knickerbocker magazine attributed the novel to "Robert C. Sands" when it reprinted parts of it in 1845. Dey was the son of a New York attorney, Anthony Dey, and his wife Catharine (Laidlie) Dey. He graduated from Columbia in 1818 and from the New Brunswick Theological Seminary in 1822. In 1822 he married Lavinia Agnes Scott of New Brunswick; four of their seven children survived their father. He was a minister in several churches, among them a Congregational Church in Greenfield Hill CT and the Reformed Church on Vandewater St. in New York. Under his own name, he later published sermons and a Christian magazine, the Olla podrida (1834-). (Katie Bray, "A Climate . . . more Prolific . . . in Sorcery," American Literature 87 [2015] 1-21 n 4; ancestry.com 3 Sept. 2018) HJ