Author: Lund, John
Biography:
LUND, John (1726-86: findmypast.com)
Lund’s publications are probably under-represented in this bibliography. Not only were they lightweight and ephemeral, but Lund and later persons for whom they were printed were careless about dates and attributions, and there may be some lost editions. Furthermore, Lund published under the same alternative titles—“Ducks and Green Pease” or “The Newcastle Rider”—both a comic verse tale about 10 pages long and a one-act farce in prose about 15 pages long, which he casually had printed in conjunction with one another or with other verse tales. (The farce is reported by Fox as having been performed “to great applause.”) But Lund was a proud Yorkshireman, offering up “a plain unornamented Yorkshire Dish” (A Collection of Oddities) and there is now a blue plaque in his honour in Pontefract, his native town, where he earned his living as a barber and wig-maker. He was the son of Robert Lund and Elizabeth Medley, who married in Nov. 1725 and had their first child baptised on 26 Sept. 1726. He became, as noted, the town barber, but enjoyed writing comic and satirical poetry, which he had printed (locally or in London) and sold from his shop. His first effort was a Hudibrastic poem, The Bath Comedians (1753), then a collection of election squibs, The Dunniad (1768), and then the pieces listed here. He also published an edition of his Ducks farce together with a comic tale also in prose, “The Adventures of Jack Okham and Tom Splicewell, Two Sailors who went Pirating,” which is usually given a speculative date of 1800 but was probably not posthumous. Lund married Ann Spencer at St. Giles, Pontefract, on 20 Feb. 1757, but she died in 1772 and he married again. The second wedding was also at St. Giles, on 27 Nov. 1774, when the bride was Ann Beevors. They had four children, at least one of whom died in infancy. John Lund died at Pontefract and was buried at St. Giles on 10 Jan. 1786. (ancestry.com 6 Feb. 2024; findmypast.com 6 Feb. 2024; Baker 1.2.464; pontefractcivicsociety.org.uk; George Fox, The History of Pontefract, in Yorkshire [1827], 6-7) HJ