Author: EDGAR, Charles Frederick
Biography:
EDGAR, Charles Frederick (1807-32: Newsam)
He was born on 17 Aug. 1807 and baptised on 30 Dec. 1817 at St. George’s Hanover Square, Westminster, London, the son of Charles Frederick Edgar, an infantry captain, and Lucy Selby, who had married in Ipswich in 1802. The reason for the late baptism is not known. He seems to have spent some of his childhood in Ipswich (“Scenes of My Childhood,” Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832, 266-7) and later revisited Suffolk (“Lines Written on the Coast of Suffolk,” “Native Scenes”) in Original Poems (1832). Nothing is known about his education. John Holland (1845) states that he went to sea, spent three years in Singapore, and suffered ill health in India which contributed to his early death. Richard Vickerman Taylor (1865) states that he had “served in the navy, in the pestilential climate of Java, and other parts of the east” and had returned with a broken constitution. Why he moved to Leeds is not known but Holland also noted that he had a widowed mother there who was still alive in 1845. He died at Potter Newton, near Leeds, aged 25, on 6 July 1832 and was buried at St. Matthew’s, Chapel Allerton. (His mother died in 1851 and was buried in the same church.) He does not appear to have married but three poems to Sophia in the work listed here may indicate a love interest. At the time of his death, he had just read the proofs of a second volume of poems and it was announced as published (Leeds Intelligencer 19 July 1832). It is rare, with the only known copy in the Shields Library, UC Davis. He had also earlier announced the forthcoming publication of The Harp of Judah (Yorkshire Literary Annual for 1832, [359]) but that did not appear. Apart from a few poems he published in Leeds newspapers, he also edited The Yorkshire Literary Annual (1832) with his contributions signed “E.” (Newsam 156-7; Richard Vickerman Taylor, The Biographia Leodiensis [1865], 342-4; ancestry.co.uk 7 July 2023; Leeds Intelligencer 27 Jan. 1831, 12 July 1832, 19 July 1832; Leeds Mercury 21 July 1831) AA
Other Names:
- C. F. Edgar
- Charles F. Edgar