Author: Lovibond, Edward
Biography:
LOVIBOND, Edward (1723-75: ODNB)
A son of Edward Lovibond (1681-1737), a director of the EIC, and his wife Mary (Collins) Lovibond (1695-1769), he was baptised at St. James, Clerkenwell, on 6 July 1723. His parents had married at St. Benet’s, Paul’s Wharf, London, on 5 July 1711. He was educated at the Charterhouse school, entered the Middle Temple on 25 Jan. 1737/8, and matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford, on 15 May 1739. Lovibond did not take a degree. He inherited wealth from his father and settled in the vicinity of Hampton, Middlesex, where he lived for the rest of his life. He married Catherine Hamilton on 12 Jan. 1744 at St. Benet’s church; they had two sons, George and James, who survived their father. Lovibond died at Hampton on 27 Sept. 1775 and was buried in the churchyard at St. Mary’s, Hampton, on 4 Oct. His will, which he had signed on 17 Sept. 1775, left his estate to his sons. Lovibond was a contributor to a weekly periodical, The World, edited by Edward Moore (as “Adam Fitz-Adam”). Some of his poems were printed but most circulated privately. Two poems in particular attracted praise: “Tears of Old May Day” and “The Mulberry Tree.” His brother, Anthony Lovibond Collins, was one of his executors and he edited Poems on Several Occasions. Other collections of his verse followed and almost certainly rely solely on Collins’s edition. Lovibond’s poems, with a biographical sketch, were included in volume 11 of Robert Anderson’s Works of the British Poets. The 1807 edition, “collated with the best editions,” was prepared by “Thomas Park, Esq., F.S.A.” (q.v.). The book follows the format of Park’s other volumes in his multivolume Works of the British Poets series. (ODNB 17 Jan. 2025; ancestry.co.uk 17 Jan. 2025; Alumni Oxonienses; Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple [1949]) SR