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Author: MacFarlane, Charles

Biography:

MACFARLANE, Robert (1799-1858: ODNB)

The primary source for the ODNB account of MacFarlane was MacFarlane’s own Reminiscences of a Literary Life, edited and published from manuscript by J. F. Tattersall in 1917; both can be improved on now with digital resources. The Wanderer, a poem he sometimes claimed to have published in London in 1820, is anomalous in several ways. No extant copy has been found. If he did write it, it was the earliest of his publications by eight years and the only poem in a very long list of histories, travel books, reviews, and novels. It heads the printed list of his publications that he submitted as part of his application to the RLF in 1848, but is not mentioned in the handwritten parts of the application form. No birth record has been found; by his own report he was born in Edinburgh on 14 Dec. 1799 to Robert MacFarlane and his wife, whose first name is not known but whose father was John Howard and her first husband a Major Harris. He lived in Naples from 1816 to 1827, travelling, enjoying literary acquaintances (Shelley among them, q.v.), and writing a little. On his return to Britain he settled in London but married in Canterbury by licence; his wife’s last name was Livingstone. They had five children who survived him. MacFarlane published voluminously, starting with Constantinople in 1828 (1829), and was a major contributor to several booksellers’ projects, notably Knight’s Pictorial History of England (1837-44), which he said cost him eight years of his life. His Reminiscences describe his association with major literary figures of the day such as John Murray, Thomas De Quincey, Leigh Hunt, and the Wordsworths (qq.v.). But an extended journey to Italy and Turkey in 1846 did not yield the material he had hoped for. MacFarlane moved his family to Canterbury. By the time of his first application to the RLF he found himself in great distress. For four applications between 1848 and 1853 he was awarded a total of £160 but in the end he was obliged to appeal for a place at the Charterhouse, London, where he was admitted as a “poor brother” in June 1857 and died on 9 Dec. 1858. (ODNB 5 Feb. 2023; RLF #1210; Charles MacFarlane, Reminiscences of a Literary Life [1917]; findmypast.com 5 Feb. 2023)

 

Books written (1):