Author: Jones, Christopher
Biography:
JONES, Christopher (1748-1792: ancestry.com)
“Another Devonshire poet!” (MR). He is probably, but not certainly, the Christopher Jones who was baptised 31 Aug. 1748 at St Andrew’s church, Plymouth, Devon, a son of John Jones and his wife, Elizabeth. When he was age fourteen, his father died, making him an orphan. He then was apprenticed to a local wool comber who took as surety his only possession, the legacy his grandfather had left him. At Holy Cross, Crediton, Devon, on 5 Nov. 1772, he married an illiterate woman, Elizabeth Brewer, with whom he had five children. On the several occasions in print when he described himself as uneducated, he was being humble or strategic. To age eleven, he had attended a “very good country school,” and, judging by his publications, he was well read in history, current affairs, the English canon, and contemporary literature (Keegan). The vagaries of employment made him financially unstable, so he supplemented his income by publishing poetry. He was helped to do so by several patrons, by the first person to learn about his poetic talent, an Exeter physician, Dr Hugh Downman; by William Carwithen; and, possibly, by Samuel Johnson (qq.v.). In 1775, he published anonymously at Crediton a lengthy poem, Sowton: A Village Conference; Occasioned by a Late Law Decision. Almost all of the 560 subscribers to his 1782 Miscellaneous Poetic Attempts were locals. Several of his pieces appeared earlier in newspapers and journals: “Ode to Benevolence” (Town and Country); “Midnight Thoughts” (Scots Magazine; London Magazine); “Ode to Hope” (Monthly Miscellany; Caledonian Mercury); “The Royal Oak: A Song” (Weekly Miscellany); and “Stanzas on the death of the late noted Slack, butcher and stage-boxer” (Weekly Entertainer; Norfolk Chronicle). Buried 18 May 1792 at Keynsham, near Bristol, he died penurious. His death was noticed nationally. It is not known if he was related to John Jones of Kidderminster (q.v.), with whom he corresponded. (ancestry.com 4 Dec. 2023; Scots Magazine [Nov. 1773], 598; London Magazine [1774], 150; Caledonian Mercury, 28 Sept. 1774; Monthly Miscellany [Nov. 1774], 282-83; Town and Country 7 [1775], 325-26; Weekly Miscellany 7 [1776], 139-40; Weekly Entertainer 1 [1783], 71; Norfolk Chronicle, 25 Jan. 1783; MR 74 [1786], 146-47; GM 72 [1792], 758; W. H. K. Wright, West-Country Poets [1896], 48-51; Devon Notes & Queries 1 [1900], 109; B. Keegan ed., Eighteenth-Century English Labouring Poets [2020], vol. 2) JC
Other Names:
- C. Jones