Author: Rickman, Thomas Clio
Biography:
RICKMAN, Thomas Clio (1761-1834: WBIS)
Although some of his title-pages bear the name "Thomas Clio Rickman" and others "T. C. Rickman," "Clio" was a pen-name that he adopted for himself. He was given the name Thomas Rickman when he was born in Lewes, Sussex, the youngest son of Elizabeth (Peters) and John Rickman. A childhood acquaintance with Thomas Paine (q.v.), who lived in Lewes from 1768 to 1774, became a defining friendship. He was initially apprenticed to his brother Joseph Rickman (q.v.), a surgeon, but left in 1779 to work with his father, who was a brewer and innkeeper. For marrying Maria Emlyn, an Anglican, outside the Quaker community in 1783, he was excommunicated. Following the death of his wife in 1784, he travelled on the Continent and then established himself as a bookseller and publisher in London and began to contribute poems and songs to the periodical press. With Jane Gritham Wall (d 1811), whom he married in 1791, he had eight children. In 1792, Rickman provided lodgings for Paine as he composed the second part of The Rights of Man. Rickman himself had already begun to take an active role in the Jacobin movement, and to publish pamphlets and songs defending Paine. It was partly to avoid prosecution for such activities that he spent some time in France during 1792-3. After the death of Paine in 1808 Rickman announced a forthcoming biography intended to counter some of the hostile reactions Paine had evoked, and although it was slow to appear, he did at length publish it (himself) in 1819. Rickman long outlived his wife and at least two of their children and died at home in London; he was buried in what was then primarily a Quaker burial ground, Bunhill Fields. (ODNB 31 Jul. 2020; findmypast.com 31 Jul. 2020; Friends' Books)
Other Names:
- T. C. Rickman