Author: REYRAC, Francois Philippe de Laurens de
Biography:
REYRAC, François Philippe de Laurens de (1734-82: NBG)
As a foreign-language author, Reyrac needs only a brief headnote, but something should be said about his translators. He was Limousin nobility, born on 29 July 1734 at the Chateau de Longeville. He chose a clerical career and at the age of 16 became one of the priests officiating at Chancelade Abbey in the Dordogne. He seems to have been naturally retiring, however, and settled instead as the parish priest of St. Maclou, Orléans. Other public duties included acting as a Royal Censor and being a corresponding member of the academy of inscriptions. Between 1757 and 1782 he published occasional poems, pamphlets, and a manual for those entering the priesthood, but the Hymne au Soleil (1777) was by far his most original and most successful work. Reyrac died at Orléans on 21 Dec. 1782. A collection of his works was published in two volumes in 1796 and reprinted in 1799. The two titles listed here appear to have been the first book-length translations of any of the writings of Reyrac in English. The translator of the first, “O--- B--- of the Middle Temple,” has not been identified, but his preface praises the poem and its use of “poetic prose, so much cultivated in France and so little known in England.” The translator of the longer selection in 1806 was Francis Browne (or Brown) Wright (1769-1837), one of six children of Richard and Anne Wright, born at Blakeney, Norfolk, and baptised on 12 Feb. 1769. His father was a labourer; both parents became non-conformists and three of their sons were preachers. Francis settled in Liverpool as a printer and lay preacher; he served as the editor of the Christian Reflector, a Unitarian monthly, from 1822 to 1827. His marriage to Mary Taylor at Norwich, Norfolk, on 20 Oct. 1801 appears to have been childless. As the printer of the Liverpool Chronicle he was prosecuted for seditious libel in 1808-9 and wrote his own account of the case (Narrative of the Proceedings, 1809); he also wrote a History of Religious Persecution from the time of the Apostles to the present day (1816). He died at Liverpool and was buried on 30 May 1837. (NBG 42, col. 88; “Wright, Richard,” ODNB 4 Dec. 2023; ancestry.com 4 Dec. 2023; findmypast.com 4 Dec. 2023) HJ
Other Names:
- F. P. Laurens de Reyrac
- Abbe de Reyrac