Author: Gilchrist, Octavius Graham
Biography:
GILCHRIST, Octavius Graham (1779-1823: ODNB)
Born at Twickenham, London, on 11 Mar. 1779, Gilchrist was a child of Stirling Gilchrist (1731-1791), surgeon apothecary, and his wife, Ann Robinson (1744-1818). He attended Magdalen College, Oxford, for several terms. Gilchrist left without a degree to assist a maternal uncle in “general trade,” selling groceries, real estate, and dry goods from a shop in the High Street, Stamford, Lincolnshire. On 12 Dec. 1804 he married, at Stamford, Elizabeth (d 4 Aug. 1859), a daughter of soap manufacturer James Nowlan (1744-1810) of the Hermitage docks, Wapping. The marriage was childless. By dint of hard work in private study, Gilchrist became a literary scholar and minor man of letters, a poet, and a Shakespeare aficionado, who busied himself finding errors in the works of other writers. He was for his efforts elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, in 1803. From 1813 he took over from John Scott (q.v.) the editorship of a radical newspaper, the Stamford News. Despite his liberalism, he was a friendly correspondent of William Gifford (q.v.), to whom in 1811 he addressed a rejoinder to Henry Weber’s edition of Ford’s plays. He, like Gifford, was a hothead. He targeted William Lisle Bowles in the QR; his QR review of Stephen Jones’s Biographia Dramatica elicited a reply in which Jones accused him personal enmity (qq.v.). In Oct. 1812 he dueled with the editor of the Stamford Mercury; neither man was hurt. The friend of men more notable than himself—Walter Scott, John Keats, and Barron Field (qq.v.)—in the QR and in London Magazine he published laudatory reviews of his friend the rural poet John Clare (q.v.). He died 30 June 1823, of tuberculosis, at his home in Stamford. (BL Add. MSS. 2245-46, 2250, 34567; NLS John Murray archive; PROB 11/1685; ODNB 27 Mar. 2023; GM [1809], 53, [1821], 291–94, 533–34, [1823], 278; World 23 Dec. 1791; Morning Chronicle 4 June 1801; Sun 5 Oct. 1812; National Register 16 Nov. 1818; Observer 15 Aug. 1859; Stephen Jones, Hypercriticism Exposed [1812]; John Clare’s Autobiographical Writings, ed. E. Robinson [1983]; The Letters of John Clare, ed. M. Storey [1985]) JC
Other Names:
- O. G. Gilchrist