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Author: Pattison, Samuel

Biography:

PATTISON, Samuel (fl 1790-1802)

Pattison’s first collection of poems appeared in Manchester in or about 1790. Like most of his work, it was published by subscription. In the preface he thanks the subscribers and gives a brief account of his background. He laments his lack of formal education: he was apprenticed to a master in an unspecified but uncongenial kind of work, “out of sight or hearing of the Muses” for seven years. Most of his poetry is pious although he declares that it was “secular perplexities that first excited me to versify.” These details suggest a birthdate in the 1750s and a birthplace in the north of England, but no public records (birth, baptism, apprenticeship) have been found to confirm them. By 1793 he was publishing in Bristol, which was his home for several years. At some point he seems to have married: his RLF application of 1801 mentions two children (but not a wife). Again, no reliable record has been located. At that point he claimed to be “nearly 50” years old. Pattison’s letters to the RLF do shed light on his circumstances. His main source of income had been his books, which he sold by travelling around the country as a specialized pedlar, but the work was hard and did not pay well. After working in a counting-house in Bristol and finding his eyesight deteriorating, he had moved to London about Oct. 1799 with a “suffering” daughter, hoping to find work that would not strain his eyes further. But he was arrested for debt and spent almost three months in prison before being released thanks to a charity for insolvent debtors. He planned to return to Bristol and open a school there; the RLF granted him five guineas. The London 1801 reprint of his poems opens with the Preface of 1792, including no later biographical information. Nothing further is known of him. (ancestry.com 28 Aug. 2023; findmypast.com 28 Aug. 2023; RLF #111)

 

Books written (7):

Manchester: Printed and sold by T. Harper, [1790?]
London: Printed by Paramore "for the Author"; sold by Knight [and many others], 1792
2nd edn. Bristol/ London: printed for the author by R. Edwards/ T. Hurst, 1799
Bristol/ London: printed for the author by R. Edwards/ Lee and Hurst, 1799