Author: Powell, Thomas
Biography:
POWELL, Thomas (1735-1820: findmypast.com)
Pseudonyms Taliessen de Monmouth, T. Demonmouth
Taliessen (usually Taliesin) was a legendary bard of ancient Britain, known of from a Welsh manuscript Book of Taliesin. The name has often been adopted as a nom de plume, especially in Wales, but Thomas Powell was not a Welshman. He was a gentleman (his son’s entry in Alumni Oxonienses specifies that he was “armiger” i.e. entitled by ancestry to bear arms), the third son of Susannah (Thistlethwayte) and David Powell, who married at Enfield, London, on 27 Apr. 1723 and had him baptised in London on 24 Aug. 1735. He married twice, both times in London—Catherine Smith on 5 May 1770 and Clarissa Madden on 10 Aug. 1786--and had at least five children from the first marriage. He died at his home, Chestnuts, in Tottenham (now north London), on 5 or 6 Nov. 1820, and was buried at St. Thomas’s, Hackney. Powell was a poet and dramatist, but one with an eccentric modus operandi. He had a horror of publicity. Hence his use of pseudonyms and his preference for having his works circulate in manuscript or be printed for private use, some of them without dates. Camillus and Columna existed in ms in 1764 but was not printed until 1806 (Bower). His response to an offer to have Garrick consider Edgar and Elfrida for the stage was “NO: by no means would I wish to be known as an author—attackable by all” (“Testimonii Variorum”). The bibliography is confusing. Besides the plays and poems collected in two volumes of “Works” in the BL or elsewhere, he used his regular printer, C. Roworth of Temple Bar, London, to print a volume of quite accomplished poems in French in 1805 (BL 11633.de.4). He did use a London publisher for Beauty (1794) and was so pleased by the response that he dedicated Daphne (1796) in gratitude to the Monthly Reviewers, though he then reserved it for private distribution. (findmypast.com 1 Apr. 2024; ancestry.com 1 Apr. 2024; “Testimonii Variorum,” prefacing some copies of Edgar and Elfrida, e.g. at Bodley, Malone H. 61; N&Q 2 May 1863; H. Bower, N&Q 22 June 1878; Alumni Oxonienses [Rev. David Thomas Powell]) HJ
Other Names:
- T.
- T. P.