Author: Franklin, John George
Biography:
FRANKLIN, John George (fl 1828)
The author of a long and feeble imitation of Byron's The Vision of Judgement (1822)--which itself had been a parody of Southey's 1821 poem A Vision of Judgement (qq.v.)--Franklin put his name on the title-page but included a preface in which he sought the reader's indulgence for "the first attempt of an author, who is not yet out of his teens." It was advertised in several London papers between 3 and 10 Aug. 1828. The work has a Latin epigraph and a show of worldliness in the satire but does not appear to have attracted any attention from the reviews, perhaps because the spat between Southey and Byron was long over and Byron, the victor, was dead. No other publications appear under this name. Nothing more is known with certainty about the author but he might have been John George Franklin, gentleman, born in London about 1808, who died on 31 Oct. 1870 at the age of 62 at his home in Fort England, Grahamstown, South Africa, leaving a wife and ten children. (ancestry.com 2 Nov. 2021) HJ