Author: Richardson, David Lester
Biography:
RICHARDSON, David Lester (1801-65: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born in London on 22 Jan. 1801, son of Sarah Lester and Lt-Col David Richardson of the Bengal Army. His father was a noted linguist with a knowledge of Persian and Hindustani who established an East India Company (EIC) college at Barasat. In 1800 he had married Violet Oliver at Kelso, Scotland, but in 1808, on a return journey from Madras, the couple and their three children died in a shipwreck. Richardson was acknowledged as a natural son in his father's will and was left £1000. He entered the EIC in 1819 as an Ensign, began to contribute poems to journals both in India and in England under the initials D. L. R., and published his first two collections. He founded the London Weekly Review in 1827 but gave control of it to Henry Colburn when he returned to India in 1828. Promoted to Captain there, he increased his literary activity: he served as editor of three journals between 1830 and 1839 and brought out a third collection of poetry as well as a collection of prose and verse, Literary Leaves (Calcutta 1836). In 1836 he was elected Professor of Literature at the Hindu College, Calcutta, on the recommendation of T. B. Macaulay (q.v.). Macaulay also encouraged his anthology, Selections from the British Poets (1840). He became Principal of various colleges--successively Hindu, Krishnagar, and Hughli (or Hugli) and Hindu Metropolitan. Upon retirement in 1861, he returned to England and to editorial work. Like his father, he seems to have had complicated domestic arrangements, the true nature of which may well never be known. Having married Marion Scott at Dinapore, Bengal, on 8 Jan. 1821 and had seven children with her, some time after 1847 he formed a relationship with a widow, Mary Elizabeth Serena Bell. The first of their three children was born in Kidderpore in 1850. Marion Richardson is recorded in the 1851 census as living in Jersey with four of their children; by 1861 she was resident in Pimlico, London. In 1861 Richardson and Mrs. Bell were living as husband and wife with their three children in Lambeth. He died on 17 Nov. 1865 in Clapham, leaving under £100, with Mrs. Bell as executrix. Marion Richardson died the following month. Mrs. Bell remarried two years later and eventually emigrated to Canada. (ancestry.co.uk 20 Jan. 2021; findmypast.co.uk 20 Jan. 2021; Calcutta Monthly Journal for 1838 [1839] 1-16; ODNB 20 Jan. 2021; Boyle; Monthly Advertiser 20 Nov. 1865; Sun [London] 21 Dec. 1865; GM Jan. 1866, 146, 156) AA
Other Names:
- D. L. Richardson