Author: Driver, Henry Austen
Biography:
DRIVER, Henry Austen (1790-1862: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised at Holy Trinity, Cambridge, on 25 Dec. 1790, the son of Thomas Driver and his wife Charlotte Hunter. He married Mary Ingle (1796-1885) at Old Church, St. Pancras, on 7 Jan. 1826. They had six children who all survived to adulthood. He first published The Arabs (1825), dedicated to Thomas Moore. He dedicated Harold de Burun (1835), which was largely based on Byron’s life, to Byron’s friend and executor John Cam Hobhouse (q.v.). In a lucid prose pamphlet, Byron and “The Abbey” (1838), he argued the case for a memorial to Byron despite his moral failings, on the grounds of his cultural importance. (The Church authorities would have none of it and Byron was not recognised in the Abbey until 1969.) Driver worked for most of his life as a wholesale stationer, initially at Barnsbury Park, Islington, and later at Moorgate Street. In 1853, he was declared bankrupt and seems never to have recovered. By 1861 he had moved to St. Mary’s Terrace, Newington (Camberwell) and gave his occupation as clerk in a general iron foundry. He died there in obscurity in July 1862. His literary papers are in Cambridge University Library. (ancestry.co.uk 2 Oct. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 2 Oct. 2020; Bury and Norwich Post 15 Mar. 1826; London Gazette 18 July 1853; CUL Ms. Add 8198) AA