Skip to main content

Author: Rugeley, Rowland

Biography:

RUGELEY, Rowland (1738-76: ancestry.com)

He was born in St. Ives near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, the son of a linen-draper, Rowland Rugeley, and his wife Elizabeth Ginn. He was educated in the classics: his first book was entitled Miscellaneous Poems (1763) and consisted mainly of translations from Latin (Horace) and French (La Fontaine) but also contained some original verse of Rugeley's own. In 1765, with a loan from his father and an introduction to the Governor, he emigrated to South Carolina and settled in Charleston, where he was given the position of Register and became a member of the governing council. He bought tracts of land around Charleston on credit but never had the money to develop them and eventually had to give them up. He married Harriet Dawson on 27 Mar. 1775 but she died in Dec. 1776 shortly after the death of their infant daughter; Rugeley himself died in the same month. His comic version of Dido and Aeneas, updated to modern America, has been called "the first classical burlesque written in America" (Compton). (ancestry.com 12 Aug. 2020; Thorne Compton, "Rugeley, Rowland," South Carolina Encyclopedia scencyclopedia.org, 12 Aug. 2020)

 

Books written (1):