Author: Grisenthwaite, William
Biography:
GRISENTHWAITE, William (1788-1842: findmypast.co.uk)
He was baptised at [King’s] Lynn on 11 Nov. 1788, the son of John Grisenthwaite, a druggist, and his wife Ann Badley. He also became a druggist but was known locally for his literary interests. He married Sarah Brown on 20 June 1811 at Burnham Westgate, Norfolk. They had at least three children. He published Sleep, A Poem in Two Books (1811) which contained A Dissertation on Poetical Composition, neither of which is particularly original. Although friends gathered to honour him in 1824 at the Fleece Inn, Wells, two other works, A Refutation of … Thomas Paine (1822) and On Genius (1830) are equally unoriginal. The heyday for such subjects had long since passed. He had originally given the lecture on Genius at the Literary and Philosophical Society of Nottingham at Bromley House in 1828 and seems to have moved there. He attempted to take private pupils but does not seem to have been a success. In the 1830s he turned his attention to food production with A New Theory of Agriculture (1830) and an Essay on Food (1838). His wife Sarah died in Nottingham in 1833. He then seems to have moved to London with his three children, Mary Ann, Elizabeth, and Sarah, and is recorded as living at Springfield Terrace, Camberwell, in the 1841 Census. He gave his occupation as White Lead Maker. He died at The Grove, Camberwell, on 31 Dec. 1842. (findmypast.co.uk 1 Nov. 2020; ancestry.co.uk 1 Nov. 2020; Bury and Norwich Post 11 Dec. 1811; Suffolk Chronicle 29 June 1811; Norfolk Chronicle 25 Sept. 1824, 30 Mar. 1833; Nottingham Review 25 Jan., 15 Feb. 1828, 22 July 1831; Bury and Norwich Post 18 Jan. 1843) AA