Author: Gardner, Edward
Biography:
GARDNER, Edward (1756-1823: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 2 Sept. 1756 and baptised at Frampton upon Severn on 10 Sept., the natural son of a Bristol wine-merchant and a woman who may have been Sa[rah] Cowley. His early education was in the Rev. Collinson’s seminary in the chapel annexed to the church of St. Mary’s, Redcliffe, in Bristol, followed by the Free Grammar School. Around 1774 he became friends with Thomas Chatterton, taught him some Latin, and was later to print some of his works. They were part of a youthful literary group which consisted of William Edwards, a poet; James Thistlewaite, a bookbinder’s apprentice; and others. He contributed a poem "On War" to the Monthly Miscellany (Sept. 1774, 173-174). In 1780 he formed a forty-year friendship with Dr. Edward Jenner and wrote articles in support of him. His major work, Miscellanies (Bristol 1798), consists of prose essays on poets, literary history and aesthetics and longer topographical and occasional poems, over twenty sonnets (Tintern Abbey, Severn, Avon), and a final section of Chatterton’s poems. The work had first been advertised for subscription in 1796 and did not reprint his early poetry. He married Elizabeth Packer, probably a schoolmistress, on 1 May 1799, at Frampton. They had a son who died in infancy. For most of his life he was a wine-merchant (which suggests he may have had contact with his father). In 1810, he wrote "Memoirs of some particulars of the Life of Edward Gardner . . ." which remains in manuscript. He died at Frampton on 25 June 1823. ("Memoirs," Royal College of Surgeons London, Ms. 0016/8; Wellcome Institute, Ms. 2471; ancestry.co.uk 9 Apr. 2021; Spenserians; Gloucester Journal 10 Oct. 1796; Bristol Mirror 5 Jul. 1823; GM July 1823, 93) AA