Author: Leftley, Charles
Biography:
LEFTLEY, Charles (1771-98: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 11 Apr. 1771 and baptised on 5 May at St. Martin in the Fields, London, the son of Charles Leftley, a grocer in the Strand, and his wife Eleanor Peak. He and his brother Cornelius entered St. Paul’s school in 1784 where he became friends with William Linley (q.v., 1771-1835). His prospects were diminished by the reduced financial circumstances of the family and he became a parliamentary reporter for The Times. His brother Cornelius took over the family firm at 368 Strand but was in the Fleet for debt in October 1795. The only poem published in the author's lifetime appears to have been his "Runic Ode. The Haunting of Havardur" (GM 1793), but his friend William Linley set his "Flights of Fancy" to music in 1797 just a year before his death and his prose translation of Goethe’s Clavidgoappeared the following year. He died at Northumberland Street, Strand, from consumption and was buried at St. John the Evangelist, Westminster, on 3 Mar. 1798. Linley edited his poems after his death and prefixed a short and largely uninformative account of his life. (ancestry.co.uk 3 Jan. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 3 Jan. 2021; "A Short Account . . . " in Sonnets, Odes, and Other Poems [1814] 1-13; R. B. Gardiner, Admission Registers of St. Paul’s School, from 1748 to 1876 [1884] 183; Star29 Jul. 1814; GM May 1793, 461-2 and Mar. 1798, 260) AA