Author: QUIN, Edward
Biography:
QUIN, Edward (c. 1762-1823: ODNB)
Pseudonym Edward Stanley
Elmira, a “dramatic poem” never intended for the stage but accompanied by almost forty pages of random “thoughts on tragedy” in prose, was published by subscription in Norwich in 1790. It attracted a quite large and very respectable set of subscribers from all around the southeast, including William Taylor of Norwich, q.v. Advertisements indicate that the author, Edward Stanley, was a member of the company of the Theatre Royal, Norwich, at the time. A modest preface mentions that it was his first publication and there is no record of any later one under this name. But “Edward Stanley, B.A.” according to Chalmers was the stage name and pen name of Edward Quin, Irish by birth and a graduate of Trinity College Dublin (BA 1787), who took some time to find his métier as a journalist and newspaper proprietor in London. University records give his full name as Edward Turnly Quin, his birthplace as county Roscommon, and his father as Henry Turnly Quin; his parentage is confirmed in records from the Middle Temple, London, which he entered on 9 Oct. 1782. According to some sources he served for a time in the German army; others maintain that he taught boxing in France and wrote a book on the subject. He married Ann Delhoste at St. Pancras, London, on 18 Sept. 1793 and they had six children between 1795 and 1802, all of whom they had baptised at Holborn in 1806. By 1803 he was editor of The Traveller and later of The Day, from 1805 until its merger with the New Times in 1817. In 1805 he was elected to the common council of London as a representative of the ward of Farringdon Without, and he published a few of his speeches in that role. He retired to Kent and according to contemporary newspaper accounts died of “a stroke of apoplexy” early in Aug. 1823 on his way home to Sheerness; ODNB gives 7 July as the death date. (ODNB 8 Dec. 2024; Alumni Dublinenses [1924]; findmypast.com 24 Nov. 2024; Ipswich Journal 24 Apr. 1790; John Chalmers, ed. A General History of the County of Norfolk [1829], 1127; GM Sept. 1823, 280; information from AA) HJ
Other Names:
- Edward Stanley