Author: Kenrick, William
Biography:
KENRICK, William (1729/30-79: ODNB)
He was born and educated in Hemel Hempstead, Herts., the son of Robert and Mary Kenrick or Kenerick; his father was a staymaker. In 1745 he was apprenticed to a maker of mathematical instruments in London, but he gave up his apprenticeship after three years to become a freelance writer, starting as a satirist but later undertaking conduct literature, periodical editing, journalism, reviewing, playwriting, dictionary-making, and lecturing. Between 1753 and 1756 he travelled on the Continent and acquired a good knowledge of French and German. From 1758 to 1766 he was the primary reviewer of foreign literature for the Monthly Review. He was a founding editor of the Morning Chronicle in 1769 and in 1775 he founded the London Review of English and Foreign Literature, which he continued until his death in 1779. Probably his most durable work was in the realm of translation, notably the works of Rousseau, Voltaire, Gessner, and Buffon. For his achievements as a translator he was given an honorary LLD by the Marischal College of Aberdeen in 1772. Kenrick married three times and had five children by his first wife, Mary Edge (b 1726/7), as well as three in a liaison between the childless second and third marriages. His satirical impulses and apparently quarrelsome character led him into disputes and controversies; he was obliged to suppress publication and issue an apology for his outrageous libel on Garrick in Love in the Suds, and spent a year in prison for debt 1777-8. He died in London and was buried in Chelsea Old Church. (ODNB 18 May 2021; ancestry.com 18 May 2021) HJ