Author: Reed, Joseph
Biography:
REED, Joseph (1721-1787: ancestry.com)
Pseudonyms, J. R.; Benedict; Pindaromastix; A Halter-Maker; Dr Humbug
The erroneous birthdate Mar. 1723, repeated in ODNB and elsewhere, originated in a lengthy obituary in European Magazine (EM). Really, he was baptized 20 June 1721 at the High Street Presbyterian church, Stockton-on-Tees, Durham, one of the six children of the younger John Reed, a semi-literate “passport and halter-maker.” He briefly attended the local grammar school, but according to his own account he was mostly self-taught. In West Aclam parish, Yorkshire, on 24 Dec. 1750, he married Sarah Watson, the daughter of John Watson, a flax-dresser at Stockton. There were three surviving children by the marriage. Concurrent with his employment as a rope maker, he wrote poems and plays. His first known publication, a poem on the death of Pope, appeared in GM in 1744. In 1747 he printed his never-staged play, The Superannuated Gallant. While he was still resident in Stockton, he received an extraordinary legacy of £2,000 that he believed he did not deserve; he passed it on to the testator’s relatives. When he moved to London, in 1757, to Sun Tavern Fields, Stepney, he retained his property in Stockton. His tragedy Madrigal and Trulletta, staged at Covent Garden in 1758, was denounced by Tobias Smollett in the Critical Review. Reed answered Smollett in A Sop in the Pan for a Physical Critick (1759). His The Register Office, his most popular play, opened in 1761 in Drury Lane. In 1769, he adapted Fielding’s Tom Jones for the stage. He died 15 Aug. 1787 at his residence in Sun Tavern Fields and was buried in the dissenters’ cemetery, Bunhill Fields. (ODNB 3 Jan. 2024; ancestry.com 3 Jan. 2024; PROB 11/1157; “To the Printer,” Universal Museum [1764], 581-83; European Magazine 12 [Sept. 1787], 185-191; GM 57 [1787], 745) JC