Author: Redding, Cyrus
Biography:
REDDING, Cyrus (1785-1870: ODNB)
He was born at Penryn, Cornwall, on 2 Feb. 1785 the son of a Baptist minister, Robert Redding (1755-1807), and his wife, Joanna. He was educated privately and then at Truro Grammer School. On 26 Mar. 1801 at Truro, he commenced his apprenticeship to Joshua Tregoning, “Printer &c.” He continued in that profession at least until 1812. Following his move to London in 1806, he engaged in journalism and became the editor of several newspapers and magazines: the Plymouth Chronicle (1808 to 1813); West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser (1810); Galignani’s Messenger (1815 to 1818, 1821 to 1830); New Monthly Magazine (1821 to 1830); Metropolitan Magazine (1831 to 1833); Bath Guardian (1834 and 1835); and the Staffordshire Examiner (1836 to 1840). He was a busy, professional writer, the author or editor of several books of prose on a miscellany of subjects, such as his popular Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (initially serialized in Constable’s Miscellany), A History and Description of Modern Wines, and England in the Nineteenth Century: An Illustrated Itinerary. A reviewer admired his plain, journalistic style. It involved “no pedantic pretensions to profound learning or philosophical research … no laboured attempts at wit, or unnecessary display of poetical reading” (Evening Mail). His biography of Thomas Campbell (q.v.) is his only lasting work. His eccentric Fifty Years’ Recollections is “a very ugly duckling, a crazy-quilt of anecdote, reflection, character sketch, and travel journal” (Radcliffe). He married twice, on 8 May 1812 to Julia Anne Moyle (b 1791) of Chacewater; and in 1829 to Emma Mary Merrick (1809-1883). Each of his wives gave birth to two children. He died at his residence, 10 Hill Road, St John’s Wood, on 28 May 1870 and was buried at Willesden on 3 June. As a man he was unpleasant, friendless, spiteful, and jealous of other writers’ success. The Satirist described him facetiously—probably as he saw himself—as a public character, “immortally entwined with the literature of this country … universal as the sun, brilliant as the stars, manifest as the moon with a cloud before her.” (ODNB 29 Dec. 2023; Naval Chronicle 25 [1811], 496; News, 11 Apr. 1830; Satirist, 6 May 1832; Evening Mail, 2 Nov. 1833; D. H. Radcliffe ed., Literary Reminiscences and Memories of Thomas Campbell by Cyrus Redding, online edn 31 Dec. 2023) JC
Other Names:
- C. Redding