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Author: Hitchener, William Henry

Biography:

HITCHENER, William Henry (1781-1818: findmypast.com)

His parents were Thomas and Elizabeth (Greenwood) Hitchener, who had married at the bride’s church of St. Andrew, Holborn, London, on 16 Nov. 1780; he was baptised on 30 Dec. 1781 at Keymer, Sussex, the elder brother of Elizabeth Hitchener (q.v.). He wrote at first for the theatre, both light pieces such as a musical entertainment (1802) or a burletta (1813) and the tragedy listed here, Ulla (1808), which was performed at Henley-on-Thames. On 13 Jun. 1808 he married Margaret Barber at Hythe, Kent, and they had at least three children baptised at Folkestone between 1809 and 1811. His final publications, both novels in two volumes—St. Leonard’s Forest and The Towers of Ravenswold—appeared in 1813 and identified the author as a member “of the Surrey Theatre,” so it appears that he was a performer as well as a writer for the stage. His name is such a distinctive one, however, that he was very probably also the unlucky “Linen-Draper, Dealer, and Chapman” who was listed as bankrupt in 1803 (from an address in Cheapside, London) and again in 1810 and 1813 (from Henley-on-Thames). William Henry Hitchener, “late of the Theatre, Kingston,” died on 30 Sept. 1818 at Morant Bay, Jamaica, where he must have been trying to earn a living at the well established theatre in Kingston, Jamaica. (findmypast.com 16 Aug. 2022; ancestry.com 16 Aug. 2022; EN2, 380; London Gazette 19 Apr. 1803, 4 Aug. 1810, 25 May 1813; Commercial Chronicle[London] 13 Feb. 1819)

 

Books written (2):

London: Printed by Lowndes and Hobbes, 1808