Author: Jackson, Zachariah
Biography:
JACKSON, Zachariah (1766-1836: ancestry.co.uk)
He gave his age as 68 in May 1834 and was almost certainly born in Dublin. His parents are not yet known. He married Jane Merodyth at St. Anne’s, Dublin, on 16 Feb. 1789. No issue has been found. In 1792, he was a printer at 18 Great Ship Street, Dublin. From 1793-7 he printed at least a dozen works from 5 New Buildings, Sackville Street, and later claimed to have employed nearly fifty compositors (RLF). A late eccentric work, The Key which Opens the Secret Cabinet in the Vatican(1831) places him in Vienna in 1800. After the failure of the Peace of Amiens, the war resumed and he was a made a prisoner at Verdun, France (c. 1803-1813), where he published the satire, The Duttonade (1806) and two shorter poems, Elegiac Verses on the late John Jackson (1807) and Wigs for Sale(1807). In 1820 he was in England working as a printer at 12 Gough Square, Fleet Street, London, but without success. From 1820 until his death, he applied to the Royal Literary Fund for assistance and was made thirteen awards totalling £150. He went to Paris in 1824, possibly in search of work as a compositor; became “utterly destitute”; and was forced to return to London. In April 1826 he was imprisoned for debt at White Cross Street. By Aug. 1827 he had gained a lowly position at Spottiswoode’s Printing Office but his wages fell from £1 a week to thirteen shillings and the RLF assisted again with £20. He was later employed as a proof reader at Mayhew’s National Library and at Northcroft’s Parliamentary Chronicle but he remained in need of RLF assistance until his death. He died at Blackfriars Road, Southwark, and was buried at St. George the Martyr on 20 Apr. 1836, aged 70. He was best known for his work on Shakespeare: A Few Concise Examples of Seven Hundred Errors in Shakespeare’s Plays, now Corrected and Elucidated (1818), revised as Shakespeare’s Genius Justified (1819). (ancestry.co.uk 28 Sept. 2023; RLF #423; Mary Pollard, A Dictionary of Members of the Dublin Book Trade 1550-1800 [2000], 316; William B. Todd, A Directory of Printers . . . London and Vicinity 1800-1840 [1972], 105) AA
Other Names:
- Z. Jackson