Author: HALL, Thomas
Biography:
HALL, Thomas (fl 1792-1815)
He is sometimes identified in catalogues as "Thomas Hall, of Winchester," but that is because his principal publication, Poems on Various Subjects, first appeared as "Written in the Debtors' Ward, Winchester." That he was there in Nov. 1806 is proven by the letter of application he made to the RLF, enclosing two poems and seeking funding so that he could return to his previous reputable "deportment in life"; they granted five guineas. (No letters of support are included in the file.) It is likely that he came originally from somewhere else and that the law simply caught up with him in Winchester. No reliable public records can be connected to him. His title-pages show a nomadic habit and he probably used publication as a way of supporting himself with little more than a basic education to go on. His specialty is sentiment, especially in pleas for the downtrodden (slaves, debtors, prisoners); respectable subscription lists prove that he must have been persuasive. His first poetic production, Achmet to Selim (1792), with a subtitle borrowed from the successful 1773 abolitionist poem by Thomas Day and John Bicknell (qq.v.), The Dying Negro, was published in Liverpool and earned him marks from MR for "moral merit" despite the poor quality of the verse. Some editions of PVS, which he reprinted (several times in subscription editions) in Oxford, London, Southampton, Hereford, and Winchester, thereafter identify him somewhat misleadingly as "the author of The Dying Negro." The last version appeared in 1815 and nothing further is known about him. (RLF #192; MR Sept. 1792, 336)