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Author: Park, Thomas

Biography:

PARK, Thomas (1759-1834: ODNB)

He was born on 24 Oct. 1759 and baptised on 13 Apr. 1760 at St. George’s, Hanover Square, the son of John Park and his wife Susanna Nevison, who had married at the same church on 23 Oct. 1757. The family lived in the village of East Acton (now in West London). His mother was baptised at Caldecott, near Oakham, Rutland, and probably organised his education at the grammar school in Heighington, Lincolnshire, sixty miles away. (Other sources have sometimes confused this Heighington with the village in Durham, or mixed up the family names of his mother and his wife.) He then trained as an engraver and throughout the 1780s, prior to his marriage, was working at various addresses around Pall Mall. He married Hester Maria Reynolds, a musician and keyboard composer, on 21 Apr. 1787 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. After marriage, he is listed at 4 St. Margaret St., Westminster, and at least two daughters were baptised at St. Margaret’s. By 1790 he had moved to Marylebone and had begun to switch his interests to literature. He was friends with William Cowper (q.v.) and Anna Seward (q.v.) and corresponded with them. Later, he and his wife were admirers of Robert Bloomfield (q.v.). After the publication of Sonnets (1797), Southey (q.v.) remarked on “his genius and delicate taste; and if he were not an engraver might be one of the first hands in poetry.” Southey, himself deeply knowledgeable about English poetry, later thought Park’s knowledge of the bibliography and history of English poetry was unsurpassed. Park planned to continue Warton’s History but never completed it, although his notes were added to later editions. However, his antiquarian contributions, although extensive, important, acknowledged, and appreciated by other scholars, do not tell the story of his real influence on young Romantic readers, which lay in the wide circulation and cheap availability of his editing of pocket-sized Works of the British Poets (1805-12). From 1804 until his death he lived at Church Row, Hampstead. His wife died there in 1813 and was buried in the Park family plot at St. Mary’s, Acton. Shortly before his death he was forced to apply to the RLF for assistance and was awarded £50.  His son John James died in 1833. At his death, 26 Nov. 1834, he left four daughters: one was insane in an asylum in Gloucester, one “indifferently married,” another a governess who had returned home, and a fourth who also lived with him. He too was buried at the family plot in East Acton. (ODNB 24 Mar. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 24 Mar. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 24 Mar. 2021; Morning Chronicle 26 Dec. 1834; GM June 1835, 663-664; Robert C. Jenkins, An Outline of the Life of Thomas Park[1885]; Spenserians; RLF 1/765) AA

 

Other Names:

  • T. Park
 

Books written (5):

London: G. Sael, 1797
2nd edn. London: G. Sael, 1797
2nd edn. London: Vernor and Hood, 1803