Author: Pennie, John Fitzgerald
Biography:
PENNIE, John Fitzgerald (1782-1848: ODNB)
No public record of birth has been found for Pennie or Penney but he published a detailed autobiography, The Tale of a Modern Genius (1827), under the pseudonym Sylvaticus, to which all accounts of his early life are indebted. His very first book, often overlooked, was The Gallic Invasion published by subscription under the name “J. Penney” in 1804. In a prefatory note to it he describes himself as living in the “obscure village” of East Lulworth, Dorset, and having been bred to “habits of laborious industry” without the advantages of “even a common-school” education. His parents, Hannah (Gould) and Robert Pennie, appear to have been domestic servants at the vicarage where he was born on 25 Mar. 1782. Despite this unpromising beginning, Pennie wrote at least five plays, some of which were performed; two epic poems; an autobiography; and lesser works. He also performed on the stage for some years and worked as a journalist for the Dorset County Chronicle and the West of England Magazine. His most reliable source of income was schoolteaching, which he practised intermittently. Literary success eluded him but he never lacked supporters from the time of his first subscription to the end of his life, and from 1821 to 1844 he made many successful applications to the RLF, with grants amounting to just under £200. On 14 Oct. 1810 he married Cordelia Maria Elizabeth Whitefield (1773-1848), the daughter of a London attorney, at St. Mary’s, Portsea, Hampshire. They had one son, Edwin (1816-92), who became a teacher assisting his father and who also married and had children, but Edwin added to his father’s distress when he emigrated to America about 1835. With the help of friends and patrons, in 1829 Pennie built a house for his family near Wareham, Dorset, naming it Rogvald Cottage after one of his epics; there he remained for the rest of his life. He died at the cottage on 13 July 1848, two days after the death of his wife; they were buried in the same grave at East Lulworth on 17 July. (ODNB 13 Sept. 2023; ancestry.com 13 Sept. 2023; finddmypast.com 13 July 2023; RLF #429; J. Penney, The Gallic Invasion[1804])
Other Names:
- J. F. Pennie
- J. Penney