Author: Dickinson, Charles
Biography:
DICKINSON, Charles (1755-1827: findmypast.com)
Descended from a Quaker family long established in Somerset, Dickinson was born in Bristol on 6 Mar. 1755 the second son of Vickris Dickinson (1718-1797) and his wife, Elizabeth (1726-1790), a daughter of Richard Marchant of Bath. He was privately educated. He passed the bar at Lincoln’s Inn but never practiced. Besides his primary residence, Farley Hill, Berkshire, he owned estates in Somerset, a house in Pimlico, and a quarter share in a Jamaica plantation with 300 slaves. In his Cyllenius, Dickinson counselled that corruption threatens the political and economic status quo and might lead to revolution. Therefore, British institutions should be incrementally reformed and slavery gradually abolished. The AR condemned Cyllenius as “a dull lamentation over the miseries which flow from democratic fury, and from monarchic confederacy” (12: 1795, 427). The poem exists in several editions. Dickinson printed twelve copies on his private press under the imprint “Farley Hill: printed by J. Magennis. 1820.” Proof of his authorship is in John Martin’s 1834 volume Bibliographical Catalogue (185, 533). A member of elite cultural associations, the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries, he was an original proprietor of the Royal Institution and a contributor to the RLF. He had his first child, Elizabeth (1795/6-1870), by a woman unknown. On 3 Aug. 1807, he married Catherine Allingham (1787-1861) of South Mimms, Hertfordshire, a daughter of Mary (Taylor) Allingham and Thomas Allingham, a London merchant and inventor. Their one child, Frances (1820-1898), befriended Mary Russell Mitford (q.v.), Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens. As “Mrs. Elliott,” Frances authored several novels. Mitford assisted Charles Dickinson by editing his self-printed and published translations of ancient authors. He died at Reading on 5 Feb. 1827. (findmypast.com 23 Mar. 2023; ancestry.com 23 Mar. 2023; LBS 24 Mar. 2023; Somerset Archive and Record Service, Dickinson MSS DD\DN; Wiltshire RO, Dickinson MSS; Berkshire RO MS: Q/RZ/1/p492, 10 Mar. 1817; PRO PROB 11/1722; Notes of Cases in the Ecclesiastical and Maritime Courts [1849], 97; A. G. L’Estrange ed., The Life of Mary Russell Mitford, 3 vols. [1870], 2:57-58; Diary of Sarah Fox née Champion: Bristol 1745-1802, eds. M. Dresser, J. Frank [2003], 255) JC