Author: Moser, Joseph
Biography:
MOSER, Joseph (1748-1819: ODNB)
Moser was the son of Swiss immigrants, Magdalene (d 1784, birth name not found) and Hans Jacob Moser (d 1796). Both his father and his uncle George Michael Moser (1706-83) were artists, the latter one of the founders of the Royal Academy and its first Keeper, with rooms in Somerset House. Joseph was born in Greek St., Soho, London, in June 1748. When his parents emigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada, with the rest of their growing family, he was taken from school and trained as a painter in enamels under his uncle. He exhibited at the Academy from 1774 to 1782 and again in 1787, but after marrying Elizabeth Julie (or Julia) Siege (1737-1817), the daughter of a surgeon, at St. Anne’s, Soho, on 19 Oct. 1780, he gradually gave up art and turned to literature. The couple lived in Hereford for three years and had one son there who died in infancy. Upon their return to London, Joseph Moser became a busy writer: a regular contributor to the European Magazine; a polemicist; a poet; a novelist; and in a final burst of energy about 1806-11, a dramatist. His best known works are probably his Turkish Tales (1793) and his Anecdotes of Richard Brothers (1795). In 1794 he was appointed a deputy lieutenant for Middlesex and a magistrate in Westminster. He made his will while resident at Princes Street, Spitalfields. His wife died there and was buried at Christ Church, Spitalfields, on 28 Jan. 1817, aged 80. He died at his home on Romney Terrace, Westminster, on 27 May 1819 (according to newspaper notices), leaving an estate valued at under £20,000, and was buried at Christ Church on 4 June. (ODNB 24 Feb. 2024 [Joseph and George Michael]; GM June 1819, 653; ancestry.com 24 Feb. 2024; findmypast.com 24 Feb. 2024; News [London] 6 June 1819)