Skip to main content

Author: Manley, Richard

Biography:

MANLEY, Richard (1806-34: ancestry.co.uk)

He was born on 24 Jan. 1806 and baptised on 1 Feb. 1809 at Southmolton (South Molton), Devon, the son of John Manley and his wife Sarah Poole, who had married in 1802. Nothing is known of his education other than his admission that he was poor and uneducated and that he had only been to Squier’s Free School (“Recollections of Schoolboy Days,” Poetical Remains, 22-7). He was possibly a  journeyman saddler and later a baker, but ill-health may have prevented him from working. He seems to have experienced poverty and refers to it in several poems. His religious verse is ordinary but his poems on outcasts may interest modern readers: “The Deserted Wife’s Lament,” “The Convict’s Lament” (on transportation), “The Sailor Boy’s Fate,” “The Outcast.” He does not appear to have married. He suffered from a “protracted affliction” for twelve to fourteen years prior to his death and was cared for by his “affectionate sister.” He died on 29 May 1834 and was buried at South Molton on 3 June. The posthumous collection, The Poetical Remains (1835), was almost certainly edited by his elder sister Sally, a dressmaker, and not by a brother as stated in West-Country Poets (1896), 320. (ancestry.co.uk 17 Jan. 2023; findmypast.co.uk 17 Jan. 2023; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette 7 June 1834; Western Times 14 June 1834; West Country Poets, 320-1; MR Feb. 1831, 202-5; Pigot’s Directory [1830]) AA

 

Books written (3):

Southmolton: printed for the author by W. Paramore, 1830
Southmolton: printed for the author by W. Paramore, 1831
Southmolton: printed by A. Tepper, 1835