Author: Jones, Stephen
Biography:
JONES, Stephen (1763-1827: ODNB)
He was born in London on 22 Oct. 1763 to Giles Jones, author and secretary of the York Buildings Water Company, and his second wife Ellen Jane Maria Fewtrell (b 1736). Jones was baptised on 25 Oct. in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the same church where his parents had married on 25 Nov. 1762. He attended St. Paul’s school before being apprenticed on 7 Apr. 1778 to a stationer, John Everingham, in Fetter Lane. On 31 May 1786 he married a cousin, Christian Jones; after her death he married Jemima Jeffrey on 24 June 1791. Jemima was a niece of William Preston, a prominent freemason. He edited several unsuccessful periodicals before becoming editor of the European Magazine in 1807. In 1812 he published an updated edition of Biographia Dramatica (originally prepared by freemason David Erskine Baker to 1764 and continued by Isaac Reed to 1782). When this attracted harsh criticism in the Quarterly Review, he issued a robust response, Hypercriticism Exposed (1812); his Biographia remains a standard reference tool. A freemason, Jones was a member of the Harodim Lodge and the Lodge of Antiquity, and he edited the Freemason’s Magazine. He died of dropsy at his home in Upper King Street (now Southampton Row) and was buried on 26 Dec. 1827 at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. His other publications reveal his eclectic interests: The Natural History of Beasts (1793), The Natural History of Birds (1793), A New Biographical Dictionary (1794), The History of Poland (1795), Sheridan Improved: a General Pronouncing and Explanatory Dictionary of the English Language (2nd edition 1797), and an edition of the poems of Thomas Gray (q.v.) (1800). (ODNB 20 Apr. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 21 Apr. 2021, 17 Jan. 2025) SR