Author: Harrison, Anthony
Biography:
HARRISON, Anthony (1772-1827: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 11 Nov. 1772, at St. Andrew’s, Penrith, in what is now Cumbria, one of at least six children of Anthony Harrison, surgeon, and his wife Barbara Robinson, who had married in 1765. He was educated at Hawkshead school, was probably apprenticed to an attorney, and later practised as a solicitor in Penrith. At school he was a younger contemporary of William Wordsworth (q.v.) and they remained lifelong friends. On 28 Aug. 1800, he visited Wordsworth with Dorothy, recording their walk and row along Rydal Lake. Coleridge (q.v.) also seems to have been on good terms with him and asked him to proofread the third number of The Friend in 1809. There was later some gossip in Penrith about one of Coleridge’s stays at Harrison’s, probably related to his use of laudanum (Dorothy Wordsworth to Catherine Clarkson, 12 May 1812). Both Wordsworth and Coleridge owned copies of Poetical Recreations (1806). Southey (q.v.), however, was scathing. He wrote to the publishers, Longman and Rees: “His verses are good for nothing…he has been labouring under mental derangement…Under these circumstances, you will not, perhaps, object to gratifying him, and depositing copies in your wateroom [sic], for the accommodation of the spiders” (5 Jan. 1806). He married Catherine Raincock, of Camberwell, London, on 22 Dec. 1807 at St. Mary’s, Lambeth. They went on to have at least nine children. He died on 12 Sept. 1827 at Edinburgh and was buried in St. Andrew’s, Penrith, where there is still a gravestone which also gives details of his wife and parents. (ancestry.co.uk 10 Jan. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 10 Jan. 2022; Morning Post 8 Apr. 1806; Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals, ed. P. Woof [2008], 304; OUCH 26 Dec. 1807; Newcastle Courant 22 Sept. 1827; Collected Letters of Robert Southey, romantic-circles.org) AA