Author: Falconer, William
Biography:
FALCONER, William (1732-70: ODNB)
Falconer is a "prior" poet who owes his entry here partly to his having been a significant influence on some of the stars of the Romantic generation (Byron, Coleridge) but also to the fact that his previously published works were reprinted in collections that themselves included original work from 1770 or later. He also earned a place in the large sets of national poets (British Poets, Anderson's Poets, Cooke's Edition, etc.) among authors considered already canonical, but those editions are not recorded because they consist entirely of reprintings. The son of William Falconer, a wig maker, and his wife Agnes Shand, he was baptised in Edinburgh on 11 Feb. 1732. After a basic education he served an apprenticeship at sea, probably in the coal trade, and went on to work on merchant ships in the Levant, in Europe, and in the North Atlantic. His long poem The Shipwreck . . . by a Sailor(1762) was a critical and popular success that led to advantageous employment as a purser of vessels laid up for refitting or repair--which meant that he no longer had to go to sea and was freed for literary pursuits, including contributions to periodical publications. In 1764 he married Jane Hicks; they appear to have had at least one daughter. Besides an enlarged edition of The Shipwreck (1764) with some other poems, he embarked on a nautical dictionary, The Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1769) which remained a standard reference work well into the nineteenth century. (WorldCat records 16 editions 1769-89 alone, and 23 of a "New" edition 1815-1969.) At the invitation of the East India Company, Falconer sailed for India as a passenger (without his family) on the Aurora in Sept. 1769, but the ship was lost at sea some time after April 1770 with no survivors. (ODNB 3 Jul. 2021; WorldCat; findagrave.com 3 Jul. 2021) HJ
Other Names:
- Falconer