Author: MAUNDE, John
Biography:
MAUNDE, John (1771-1813: ancestry.com)
Details of his parentage and personal life are scarce. He was born in Montgomery, Wales, and educated at Christ's Hospital. In the early years of the French Revolution he went to Paris, was arrested with other British citizens, and spent four years in prison. After his release he attended university in Oxford, then took orders in Worcester. He supported himself before he secured a post within the church by translating from French, including Delille's poem (1801) and Thiébault's prose journal of the siege of Genoa (1809). (But he was hard up: the RLF granted him £21 in 1801 and another £10 in 1802.) Samuel Butler (q.v.) recruited him to translate Lucien Bonaparte's epic Charlemagne in 1811 but Maunde had drafted only eight cantos before he died, so Butler took it over along with Francis Hodgson (q.v.). In 1812 Maunde was appointed a curate at Kenilworth. In 1813, as he was travelling to take over a new living at Abberton, he died suddenly at an inn after a violent fit of coughing. (ancestry.com 2 Apr. 2020; Monthly Magazine 35 [1813] 470; S. Butler "Preface," Charlemagne [1815]; RLF Archive, BL)