Author: Preston, William
Biography:
PRESTON, William (1750-1807: ODNB) pseudonyms Charidemus, Richard Twiss
A prolific poet and dramatist, he was born in the parish of St. Michan’s, Dublin. His mother’s name is unknown and his father, William Preston, disappeared in about 1755 on his way to India. Preston was educated at Dr Campbell’s School, Dublin, before entering Trinity College Dublin (BA 1770, MA 1773). Under the pseudonym Charidemus, he contributed to Pranceriana, (1775), a collection of satirical pieces opposing the appointment of a new provost to the university. He studied law in the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in Ireland in 1777, but his main interest was in literature and he was a key participant in Dublin’s cultural life. He helped to found the Royal Irish Academy in 1785 (and contributed essays to its Transactions while also serving as the Academy’s first secretary), worked to establish the Dublin Literary Society (1791), contributed to Joshua Edkins’s three collections of poems (1789, 1790, 1801), and wrote for the periodical press. He became a member of the “Monks of the Screw” or “Monks of the Order of St Patrick,” a patriot club, and in 1784 was appointed a commissioner of appeals. In 1789 Preston married Frances Dorothea Evans, whose father, John Evans, became the fifth Baron Carbery in 1804; she edited Preston’s posthumous poems. They had seven children but one of his poems concerns the death of a son, William, who was born in about 1783 and was either illegitimate or the child of an earlier marriage whose details have not been traced. The Preface to his 1793 Poetical Works complains of the lack of copyright in Ireland and says that the publication was made necessary by plans for a “surreptitious” and error-filled collection of his poems. In the 1790s he composed dramas, with the most successful being Democratic Rage, based on events in the French Revolution. He died suddenly at his home in Gloucester Street, Dublin, of miliary fever. He was buried in St Thomas’s graveyard but his body was later moved to Mount Jerome Cemetery. Separate editions of two of his plays published in 1793 (Messene Freed and Rosamunda; or, the Daughter’s Revenge) have not been traced but the tragedies are included in his Poetical Works of the same year; another, The Adopted Son, seems not to have been published but survives in manuscript (BL). (ODNB 31 July 2020; DNB 31 July 2020; DIB 31 July 2020; ancestry.co.uk 31 July 2020)
Other Names:
- W. Preston