Author: Impey, Elijah Barwell
Biography:
IMPEY, Elijah Barwell (1779-1849: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 6 Aug. 1779 at Calcutta, India, the son of Elijah Impey and his wife Mary Reade, the daughter of Sir John Reade of Shipton Court, Oxfordshire, who had married in 1768. His father was appointed Chief Justice of Fort William, Bengal, in 1774. There is a portrait of the family in India (c. 1783-4) by Zoffany in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid. He was sent to England to be educated at Westminster (King’s Scholar 1794, Captain of School 1798) and Christ Church, Oxford (matric. 1799, BA 1803, MA 1806). In 1808 he briefly served in the 14th Dragoons as Cornet but left the following year and devoted himself to literature although he was for many years a Director of the British Fire Office, a large insurance company based in the Strand and Cornhill. His verse listed here is undistinguished and his later Illustrations of German Poetry (1840) added little to German studies. However, his Memoirs of Sir Elijah Impey (1846) remains an important document in the history of British India. He died at Clapham, London, on 3 May 1849, aged 69, and was buried in the family vault at St. Paul’s, Hammersmith. He never married and left his estate (including the Zoffany portrait which he kept in his study) to his siblings and friends. (ancestry.co.uk 9 May 2022; findmypast.co.uk 9 May 2022; “Impey, Sir Elijah,” and “Impey [née Reade], Mary,” ODNB 9 May 2022; Records of Old Westminster [1927] 1: 501; Literary Notes and Papers, Bodley, MS Eng. Poet. F. 29; Morning Post 5 May 1849) AA