Author: Lemon, Mark
Biography:
LEMON, Mark (1809-70: ODNB)
Best remembered as one of the founders and the first editor of the satirical magazine Punch, Lemon had a varied and successful career as a popular writer in Victorian England. He was the son of Alice (Collis) and Martin Lemon, born in Oxford St., London, on 30 Nov. 1809 and baptised on 30 Dec. His father died in 1817, after which his mother stayed in London working as a milliner while he was sent to live with his paternal grandparents at their farm at Hendon, Middlesex (northwest London). He boarded for some time at Cheam School, but his formal education came to end when his grandfather died in 1820. After the death of his grandmother in 1823 he was apprenticed to an uncle on his mother’s side, in Lincolnshire, to learn the hops business. He moved to London after serving his apprenticeship, but continued to earn his living in the brewing trade until 1840. Meanwhile, about 1834 he began contributing comic sketches and poems to magazines, and to write mainly short pieces for the stage. A melodrama, Arnold of Winkelreid, was published in 1834 under his initials and then staged and reprinted with his full name in Oct. 1836 after the success of a “burletta,” The P. L., performed at the Strand Theatre in Apr. 1836. There followed a stream of comedies, farces, burlesques, etc. Lemon used some of the proceeds of his playwriting to buttress Punch when it made a slow start, and then for almost thirty years managed the weekly with growing success. On 28 Sept. 1839 he married Helen (Nelly) Romer (1816-90) at Holy Trinity, Kensington; they went on to have ten children. Charles Dickens became a close friend: they were neighbours and occasional collaborators; they also performed and even toured together several times 1845-57, but fell out (for a decade) over Dickens’s separation from his wife in 1858. In May 1848 Lemon moved to Vine Cottage, Crawley, Sussex, where he wrote five novels, among other things. He undertook a lecture tour on the history of London in 1862 and played Falstaff on tour and in London in 1868-9. He died at Vine Cottage on 23 May 1870 and was buried on 27 May at St. Margaret’s, Ifield. (ODNB 4 Jan. 2024; ancestry.com 4 Jan. 2024; findmypast.com 4 Jan. 2024)
Other Names:
- M. L.