Author: Horsford, John
Biography:
HORSFORD, John (1751-1817: ODNB)
He was born in London on 2 May 1751 and baptised on 19 May at St. George-in-the-East, Stepney, where his parents Ann Scott and John Horsford had married on 31 July 1750. He received a good education at the Merchant Taylors’ School and went on to St. John’s College, Oxford (matric. 1768, Fellow 1768-71), but instead of proceeding to a degree he ran away and enlisted in the EIC’s Bengal Artillery under the name of John Rover and sailed for India on 1 Apr. 1772. The reasons for this drastic step are not clear but he was certainly at odds with his family, either for bad behaviour (as he hints in the collection of 1797) or because he was led astray by poetry and resisted the expectation that he would become a clergyman. He served as an enlisted man in the artillery for six years before his identity was discovered. By then he had found his calling. He stayed in India, accepted a commission, rose to be Commander of the Artillery (1808), and was knighted (KCB) in 1815. He last saw action as director of artillery at the siege of Hathras in 1817; by then he was a major-general. He died of heart failure at Cawnpore on 20 Apr. 1817 and was buried in Kacheri cemetery. Although he did not marry, he had a stable and apparently happy family life with his Indian partner, Sahib Jaun, with whom he had six children. They may also have adopted two girls from the Howrah orphanage. A great admirer of Sir William Jones (q.v.), Horsford was active in literary culture in colonial India. Gibson argues persuasively, on the basis mainly of internal evidence, that he was the author of all three parts of the 1800 volume, including the anonymous translation of Jones’s Latin poems. (ODNB 22 Nov. 2022; findmypast.com 22 Nov. 2022; Alumni Oxonienses; Mary Ellis Gibson, “Sir John Horsford,” Anglophone Poetry in Colonial India, 1780-1913 [2022], 44-7)
Other Names:
- J-- H-- [Sir John Horsford]