Author: Harpley, Thomas
Biography:
HARPLEY, Thomas (fl 1784-90)
As “T. Harpley” he published two collections of poems. The first appeared in London in 1784 and was co-authored with his friend William Sancroft, q.v. The second, a combination of poems and pieces for the stage, came out in Liverpool in 1790. Reviews of the first volume were brief and dismissive. In the preface to Dramas and Poems, Harpley describes himself as a “young poetical Adventurer” and notes that two of the dramatic pieces had already been successful in performance at Liverpool: those were “The Milliners,” a burletta, and “The Genius of Liverpool,” a spectacle in one act that had been performed by the Kembles. The chronicler of drama in the period, David Baker, has no personal information about Harpley but confirms the existence of those plays, together with “The Triumph of Fidelity,” as stage pieces that may also have been separately printed (no confirmation has been found). It seems very likely that Harpley was born in Norwich, Norfolk, on 9 Apr. 1757 and baptised there on 10 June, the son of George and Jemima (Cuckow) Harpley. Sancroft was also raised in Norwich. Harpley’s name in the subscription list for the anonymous Poems on Various Subjects, by a Young Gentleman (1776, in this bibliography) is evidence of his having lived in London as a young man before he settled in Liverpool. His whereabouts after 1790 are not certain. Thomas and Georgia Harpley buried their infant son at St. James, Toxteth, Liverpool, in 1803 but no marriage record has been found, and that man was presumably the one who was buried at the same church on 4 Oct. 1809—a working man whose occupation is given as “landing waiter.” Watkins includes Harpley in his list of “living authors” in 1816, but that is no guarantee that he was in fact still living. (ancestry.com 22 Dec. 2024; findmypast.com 22 Dec. 2024; CR 59 [1785], 68; European Magazine 7 [1785], 282; Baker 1i: 311; Watkins) HJ
Other Names:
- T. Harpley