Author: Lees, Edwin
Biography:
LEES, Edwin (1800-87: ODNB)
When his “masque” for Christmas and the New Year was published, Lees was newly married: the unnamed lady to whom the work was dedicated was presumably his bride, Sarah Kingsbury, whom he had married at her home town of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, on 26 July 1827. Lees was a native of Worcester, however, the son of Thomas Lees, a woollen draper, and his wife Elizabeth Terrill of Birmingham. He was baptised at Worcester on 16 May 1800 but in Dec. 1808 his parents registered him as a non-conformist at Dr. Williams’s Library, London, giving a certified birth date of 12 May. His father died in 1809; his mother remarried; and he attended a boarding-school in Birmingham until he was apprenticed to a master printer. Once out of his indentures, Lees established himself as a printer and bookseller in Worcester; he was the printer of the masque. Under the pseudonym “Ambrose Florence” he wrote and published a guide to the city (1828); he also started a short-lived quarterly for local history. An enthusiastic, self-educated naturalist and antiquarian, he was a major contributor to Illustrations of the Natural History of Worcestershire (1834) as well as its publisher in Worcester. He became a fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1835 and shortly after embarked on a new career, giving up his shop and moving to Tewkesbury to live by his pen and pursue his scientific interests. He became a renowned botanist and advocate for natural history, much in demand as a speaker. Besides professional papers and lectures and occasional commissions for periodicals, he published numerous monographs, culminating in The Botany of Worcestershire (1867). He also wrote on Shakespeare’s “rural haunts” (1854) and brought out a final collection of verse in 1880. After the death of his wife in 1878—the marriage had been childless--he returned to Worcester and on 3 Aug. 1883 married Jane Matthews (not Bridges), a widow, at St. Mary’s, Islington, London. He died at their home, Green Hill Summit, Worcester, on 21 Oct. 1887, and was buried in the churchyard at Pendock, near Tewkesbury, along with his first wife. He left an estate valued at just under £2400. There was a long, detailed obituary in the Worcester Journal. (ODNB 26 Dec. 2023; ancestry.com 26 Dec. 2023; findmypast.com 26 Dec. 2023; Worcester Journal 29 Oct. 1887) HJ