Author: Rusted, Robert
Biography:
RUSTED, Robert (1745/46-1813: ancestry.com)
The poet may be the man whose parents, Robert Rusted and his wife, Sarah Godsell, were married on 8 Apr. 1740 at Saffron Waldon, Essex. Nothing is known about his early years or his education. A London printer, publisher, bookseller, and proprietor of a circulating library, he lived in or operated businesses at several locations in London: in Bridge Street from 1777 through 1784, from whence in the latter year (not 1770) he published the first and second edition (that is, a second printing) of his A Select Composition of Original Poetical Pieces, Serious and Comic; concurrently in 1784 he occupied 183 Fleet Street; in 1783 he moved to Shoe Lane, Fleet Street, initially to number 2, then in 1787 to number 13; from 1791 he also was listed at 22 Fleet Street. On 3 Nov. 1777, Robert Rusted of St Bride’s church (in the vicinity of Fleet Street) married Hannah Ruffle at St Nicholas church, Kelvedon Hatch, Hertfordshire. He was a widower when on 28 July 1783 at Holy Sepulchre, Holborn, he married Sarah Jenkinson (d 1817). There were no children by either marriage. He died, age 67, in Feb. 1813 and was buried on 15 Feb. at St. Bride, Fleet Street. One of his songs appeared in 1787 in Parsley’s Fashionable Lyric Companion” and three in The Naval Songster, or Jack Tar’s Chest of Conviviality for 1798. He printed and published books for several authors: from 3 Bridge Street on 12 Feb. 1783 a satirical cartoon by printmaker John Boyne, The docter [sic] himself pouring out his whole soul; in 1785 Trial of Lady Ann Foley; in 1787 at Shoe Lane A Critical Review of the Works of Dr Samuel Johson, and from the same address, William Falconer’s (q.v.) The Shipwreck, A Poem. He also edited and published compendia that include several of his poems, Humorous and Entertaining Jester or the Pablum of Life. Containing a Variety of Original Jests, Entirely New (c. 1795), Monstrous Good Songs, and Toasts (1801), and The New Festival of Wit (n.d.), the latter “Printed for R. Rusted, at the Circulating-Library, Shoe-Lane.” (ancestry.com 28 Oct. 2024; findmypast.com 26 Oct. 2024) JC