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Author: Hall, Samuel Carter

Biography:

HALL, Samuel Carter (1800-89: ODNB)

He was born on 9 May 1800 in Waterford, Ireland, while his father was serving with a British regiment. Both parents, Ann (Kent) and Robert Hall, were from Devon and had married at Exeter in 1790. The family moved back and forth between England and Ireland for some years but Hall grew up mainly in Cork. In 1822 he went to London and found work as the secretary of the exiled Italian poet Ugo Foscolo. On 20 Sept. 1823 he married Anna Maria Fielding (1800-81) of County Wexford, in London. She became a writer almost as prolific as he, author of novels, tales, plays, and tracts, and editor like her husband of several influential periodicals. They had a long and happy marriage as a professional writing couple but had only one child--and she died in infancy. He entered the Inns of Court to train as a lawyer in 1824, was not called to the bar until 1841, and never practised. Instead he earned a living and built up a good reputation as a writer and editor, mainly for periodicals. Chief among his projects were the annual Amulet (1826-30), which brought him into the circle of Coleridge and Southey (qq.v.); the New Monthly Magazine (1830-6); and a new arts magazine of which he was the founding editor in 1839, the Art-Union (renamed Art Journal in 1849), which proved his most successful and profitable venture until his retirement in 1880. On the strength of experience and contacts made in that role, he embarked on a succession of illustrated books, notably Ireland (1840, co-authored with his wife), Baronial Halls (1845-6), and The Stately Homes of England (1874-7). The Halls were active in society, entertaining writers of their circle at their Brompton house, The Rosery. They were committed philanthropists, supporting the temperance movement and calls for improvements to working conditions for women; they were also supporters of the Chelsea Hospital and of the Brompton Consumption Hospital. In 1849 they moved to a country house, Firfield, near Addlestone in Surrey, and later to a smaller home in East Molesey, where they continued to write. After the death of his wife in Jan. 1881, Hall returned to London; published an autobiography in 1883; and died at his home in Kensington on 16 Mar. 1889. He was buried next to his wife in Addlestone churchyard. (ODNB 4 Jan. 2022, Samuel Carter Hall and Anna Maria Hall; Orlando 4 Jan. 2022)

 

 

Other Names:

  • S. C. Hall
 

Books written (3):

London: printed by R. Watts, 1820
London: printed by R. Watts, 1822
London: printed by [Weed and Rider], 1823