Author: Stewart, Joseph
Biography:
STEWART, Joseph (fl 1809-12)
Both the collections of verse attributed to Joseph Stewart were published by subscription, one in London and the other in Calcutta. In the absence of reviews or digitised copies, few clues are available as to the author’s identity. A pre-publication announcement of Attempts to Amuse gives his name as Joseph Stewart, Jun.: his father must have been Joseph too. It is possible that he was the son of Joseph and Sarah Stewart born in London in 1786 and baptised there on 11 Jan. 1787. Besides the London printer and booksellers, the first book was handled by a bookseller in Bedford, Bedfordshire—which may be evidence of Stewart’s origins. The second was published as by “an Officer”: evidently Stewart had joined the British army at some point between 1809 and 1812. Newspapers in India included his name but not his army rank (Joseph Stewart, Esq.) in the list of passengers en route to England on the Lord Castlereagh in 1813. But his name is common enough that hardly anything about him can be taken for certain. (ancestry.com 4 Dec. 2024; findmypast.com 4 Dec. 2024; Monthly Repository 12 [1809], 473; Government Gazette [India] 15 Apr. 1813)