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Author: Greswell, William Parr

Biography:

GRESWELL, William Parr (1765-1854: ODNB)

He was baptised on 23 June 1765 at Tarvin, Cheshire, the son of John Greswell, a hairdresser, and his wife Betty Parr, who had married at Knutsford, Cheshire, earlier that year. It is not known if he attended King Henry VIII’s school in Chester, but in the 1780s he was the undermaster there when Thomas Bancroft, q.v., was headmaster. He contributed poems such as "The Dying Christian," "Mary’s Dream," and "The Beggar’s Petition" to Prolusiones Poeticae edited by Bancroft, and the two men collaborated on "Cantilena Hymenalis." He does not seem to have proceeded to university, possibly because his family were later members of Crooks Lane Unitarian Chapel, Chester. However, he must have conformed since he became assistant curate at Blackley Chapel, Manchester, in 1789, and from 1791 perpetual curate at Denton, near Manchester. He supplemented his modest salary of £100 a year by taking in pupils and teaching. He married Ann Yeardly on 30 Aug. 1794 at Manchester Cathedral (not Anne Hague--an error in the ODNB not in the original DNB). They had at least seven sons (five of whom, including Richard Greswell [q.v.],  went to Oxford) and at least one daughter (who died in infancy). He died on 12 Jan. 1854 at Denton. His works on Parisian typography and on the Italian Renaissance poets probably retain more value than his own poetry: Annals of Parisian Typography (1818), A View of the early Parisian Greek Press (1833), Memoirs of Angelus Politianus, . . . Mirandula . . .  Sannazarius . . . Bembus (1801 and 1805). (ODNB 14 Nov. 2021; DNB; J. F. Smith, The Admission Register of Manchester School [1866] 1: 105, [1874] 3.1: 77-8; Manchester Mercury 24 May 1791, 24 June 1793; Manchester Courier 21 Jan. 1854;  GM Apr. 1854, 427-8; contributions from SR) AA

 

Other Names:

  • W. P. Greswell
 

Books written (5):

Manchester: Printed by R. & W. Dean & Co. for Cadell & Davies, Strand, London, 1801
2nd greatly augmented Manchester: Printed by R. and W. Dean for Cadell and Davies, 1805
[Manchester]: printed by [Henry Smith], 1823
[Manchester]: [no publisher; private printing], [1823]