Author: Gardiner, William
Biography:
GARDINER, William (1766-1825: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 16 Apr. 1766 at Whitchurch, Herefordshire, the second son of Edward Gardiner and Mary Tudman, who had married at Monmouth, Wales, in 1764. He went to school in Bristol and was originally destined for a career in law but the profligacy and negligence of his father prevented this and he went to work as a clerk in Lydney, Gloucestershire, where he married Mary Howell on 29 August 1791. They went on to have around ten children. The eldest daughter, Jane (“Jenny”) wrote the tale “The Exile of Scotland” appended to his novel Edward Wortley (1819, unattributed in library catalogues and EN2). Their third daughter, Mary Ann, edited his Original Poems (1854). Gardiner visited North America three times, mostly Philadelphia and Baltimore, in the period 1793-1803, working in counting-houses and teaching. In 1804 he returned to Lydney where he ran an academy for over ten years. His play The Sultana, never performed and “misnamed a tragedy” (CR) belongs to this period. Gardiner moved to London in 1816 to work for the publisher Donald Mackay of 44 Newgate Street, for whom he edited The British Lady’s Magazine and wrote a series of works for children (listed in Original Poems, 50-2). His daughter claimed he was the author of the well-known tale The Adventures of Congo in Search of his Master, and reprinted it as his in 1856 with Darton & Co., but modern scholars accept Eliza Ware Farrar’s authorship. With Mackay’s increasing financial problems and his death in 1823, Gardiner’s own finances and health deteriorated. He returned to giving private tuition and continued to do so until three weeks before his death. He died at Woodstock Street, off New Bond Street, Westminster, on 18 May 1825. His wife Mary died in July. Poems on Various Occasions (1813) is very rare, with the only known copy at Yale, although his daughter reprinted various poems in the collection of 1854 which included a “Memoir,” his poetry, and two essays on Beauty and Education. (ancestry.co.uk 30 May 2024; findmypast.co.uk 30 May 2024; “Memoir” in Original Poems [1854], 1-59; Catherine de Saint-Rat, “In search of the author of The Adventures of Congo,” PBSA 72/3 [1978], 53-57; Marjorie Moon, John Harris’s Books for Youth, 1801-1843, [1976], 11) AA