Author: Fletcher, James
Biography:
FLETCHER, James (1811-32: findmypast.com)
He was born in Kent to "respectable" parents said to have had a "large property near Canterbury," but no record of a parish birth has been found and the names of his parents are not known. He matriculated at Clare Hall, Cambridge, in 1828 and put that address on the title-page of his first work, Chozar and Sela, which he declared was written "before my eighteenth year." After transferring to Trinity in Dec. 1829, he used that college address for his second book, the History of Poland (1831). But he must have been short of funds, because while still registered at Cambridge, he lived and worked for two years as an assistant at a school in St. John's Wood, London. He was also busy as a writer contributing to The Gem, the Monthly Magazine, and probably other periodicals. In Dec. 1831 he left the school and took lodgings in Grove Terrace, Lisson Grove, hoping to live by his pen. His friends reported him depressed and in acute financial distress on 2 Feb. 1832, and in the course of that night he shot himself through the heart. He was buried on 9 Feb. at St. Dunstan, Canterbury. (findmypast.com 21 Sept. 2021; ACAD; Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette 16 Feb. 1832) HJ