Author: Lucas, William
Biography:
LUCAS, William (1775-1810: ancestry.com)
He came of an established Norfolk family and was baptised at King’s Lynn on 13 June 1775, the son of Elisabeth and George Lucas. Nothing is known of his education but after a stint in the Royal Navy he made a second career for himself as a writer in London. On 19 Aug. 1797 he married Elizabeth Calcott (1776-1841) at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, London; they had at least four sons, one of them the painter John Lucas (1807-74). Lucas for a time was a sub-editor on the London newspaper, the Sun. His line in literature was upright but rather dull. The Fate of Bertha (1800) tells a story of rape, revenge, and suicide with no overt moral: as CR complained, though potentially sensational it is “narrated without energy or pathos.” There followed a prose story with an explicit moral, The Duellists (1805); an allegory, The Travels of Humanius in Search of the Temple of Happiness (1809); and a theatrical interlude, The Manuscript (1809). Watkins included him among the “living authors” of Great Britain in 1816 and his date of death is sometimes given as 1819, but in fact he died quietly in 1810. A death notice in OUCH gives no details but describes him as the “author of several productions of approved merit.” He was buried on 11 Apr. 1810 at St. John the Evangelist, Smith Square, London. (ancestry.co 3 Feb. 2024; findmypast.com 3 Feb. 2024; “Lucas, John,” ODNB 3 Feb. 2024; DNB; OUCH 14 Apr. 1810; CR 32 [1801], 227; GM 69 [1801], 327)