Author: Henderson, Henry Barkley
Biography:
HENDERSON, Henry Barkley (1793-1862: BPI)
He was born on 1 Aug. 1793 and baptised on 6 Sept. at St. Mary, Newington, Lambeth, the fifth of at least seven children of James Henderson and his wife Helen Garden, who had married in Scotland in 1786. He received an elementary education of a little Latin, algebra, and accounts in Woburn, Bedfordshire. After his father’s death he enlisted in the East India Company in Jan. 1810, attended the EIC college at Haileybury, and went to India where he served as Lieutenant in the 8th Native Infantry regiment from 1814. He was promoted to Captain (1825) and Major (1838). He retired in 1841 and returned to England where he became a Director of a company which sold investments and annuities to British residents in India. He gave up his directorship in 1845 to become Chairman of the newly formed Great Western Railway, Bengal. He was also a London agent for the Bengal Military Orphan Society. He was given the rank of Lt.-Col. in 1854. He married Eliza Magdalena Hawkins (1802-86) on 1 July 1822 at Fort William, Bengal. They went on to have at least nine children. In 1851 they were living at 11 Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, but subsequently moved to Spring Grove, near Isleworth, outside London, where he died on 3 Dec. 1862 and was buried at All Souls, Kensal Green, leaving an estate of just under £7000. The works listed here were all published anonymously. The second edition of The Bengalee (1843) bore his name, allowing the attribution of The Bengalee (1829) and Satires in India (1819) which both editions reprinted. The Oriental Magazine (Mar. 1831, 1: 333-42) claimed that the author of Satires in India (1819) and Heera (1822/1831) were the same person. Violanthe (1818) is known to be his through a presentation copy. The Goorkah(1817) contains a poem, “The Suttee” (69-78) which was reworked in Heera (1822). Maria Jane Jewsbury, reviewing Heera (1831), compared its treatment of Suttee to the Oxford Prize poem by Percy Ashworth (q.v.). Nevertheless, a detailed setting-out of the attribution evidence would be helpful since most library catalogues do not group all five works under the same author. (BPI 1: 135-49; Hodson 2: 427-8; ancestry.co.uk 31 May 2022; Athenaeum 8 Oct. 1831, 643; MH 11 Mar. 1845, 13 June 1846; LES 11 Dec. 1862; GM Jan. 1863, 131; BL, IOR, Enlistment papers) AA