Author: Johnson, W. R.
Biography:
JOHNSON, W. R. (1787-1844: ancestry.co.uk)
Walter Rankin Johnson was born on 11 July 1787 and baptised on 27 July at St. James, Piccadilly, London, the second son of Benjamin John Johnson and Ann Paterson, who had married at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Westminster, in 1780. He was a King’s scholar at Westminster (1801) and then went up to Trinity College Cambridge (matric. 1805, Scholar 1806, BA 1809, MA 1812). He returned to Westminster as usher (second master) from 1814 to 1819. He was ordained deacon (1813) and priest (1815) in the established church. His clerical or pedagogical career after 1819 is not known until he was appointed curate of West Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in 1832. He remained there until his death. He married Louisa Stephens on 2 Dec. 1840 at Dilwyn, Herefordshire. They had a son and a daughter. He died on 27 Oct. 1844 at the vicarage, West Wycombe. The various school books listed here, with prefaces written from Richmond Hill and dedications to Sir Richard Phillips’s three sons, Richard, Alfred, and Horatio, whom he tutored, identified the author only as “W. R. Johnson, A.M.” The identification of him as clergy is in Watkins. Richmond Hill was then in Surrey and some distance from the Central London residences of both his and the Phillips families. Phillips’s out of town residence was a villa in Hampstead so it is unclear why the works were written at Richmond Hill. Phillips originally published only the second editions of TheHistory of Rome (1811) and The History of England (1812) but may have taken over the stock of the earlier works. The World Described, in Easy Verse is probably by Johnson but the title-page reads “By W. R. Lynch, Esq, Author of The Poetical Histories of England, Greece and Rome.” The reasons for this are not known but Johnson’s switch to a clerical career and cavalier treatment of schoolbook authorship are the most likely explanations. (ancestry.co.uk 8 Aug. 2023; CCEd 8 Aug. 2023; Joseph Welch, The List of the Queen’s Scholars of St. Peter’s College, Westminster [1852], 464; Watkins, 181; MH 3 Dec. 1840; Hereford Journal 30 Oct. 1844; GM Dec. 1844; “Phillips, Sir Richard,” ODNB 8 Aug. 2023) AA