Author: Hailes, Nathaniel
Biography:
HAILES, Nathaniel (1802-79: ancestry.com)
Pseudonyms Percy Rolle, Timothy Short
He was born in London on 16 Nov. 1802 and baptised on 7 Dec., the son of Ann (Porter) and Nathaniel Hailes. His father was a bookseller who worked at first in partnership as Sharpe and Hailes--publishers of Byron, Cowper, and the Elegant Extracts, among others--and then about 1816 started to publish independently as N. Hailes, specializing in books for children and young people. The Hive (1832, q.v.) was a typical Hailes title. Hailes Jr. went into the business; he later claimed personally to have dissuaded Lady Byron from publishing a tract on the education of women. Several poems under his pseudonym “Percy Rolle” appeared prior to 1826 in The Spirit and Manners of the Age and The Literary Souvenir; his “Song” (“Leaves quiver in the balmy air”), anthologized in 1827 in The Pledge of Friendship, was reprinted in the Leeds Patriot (1832) and in The Lyre (1841). On 16 Feb. 1824 he married Ann Simpson at St. George's, Hanover Square; they had four children but she died at some point after the baptism of the youngest in Jan. 1833. It is possible that Hailes Sr. died about 1829 and that the son took over the business; in any case, in 1837 N. Hailes declared bankruptcy. Hailes Jr. married Eliza Mott (1816-93) in Jul. 1838 and emigrated to South Australia, where four more children were born. He had a chequered career thereafter. The family lived for the most part in Adelaide where he worked as an auctioneer with sidelines in journalism and clerking, but he was once again declared insolvent in 1862. He contributed poems to newspapers under the pseudonym "Timothy Short" and started an unsuccessful newspaper, the Adelaide Free Press; he also published one more ambitious poem, The Soul's Journey (1856) in London. In 1877 his "Recollections of a Septuagenarian" appeared in the Adelaide Observer. He died in Adelaide on 24 Jul. 1879 and was buried in the West Terrace Cemetery. The State Library of South Australia holds holograph mss, scrapbooks, and other relevant items in its archives. (ancestry.com 20 Dec. 2021; findmypast.com 19 Dec. 2021; Oxford Companion to Australian Literature; Weekly Times [London] 9 Aug. 1829; London Gazette 28 Nov. 1837; Adelaide Observer 26 Jul. 1879; A. A. Watts, ed., The Poetical Album [1829] 2: 295; contributions by JC) HJ
Other Names:
- N. Hailes, Jr.