Author: Stockdale, John Joseph
Biography:
STOCKDALE, John Joseph (1776-1847: ancestry.com)
“Notorious Stockdale” was born on 22 Oct. 1776 the son of a prominent London publisher-bookseller, John Stockdale, and his wife, Mary, who was the sister of a London bookseller, James Ridgway. The poet was baptized at St James, Westminster, on 17 Nov. 1776. Having adopted his father’s profession, from 1802 to 1822 he conducted his business at 33 Pall Mall. In 1806 he opened an auction house at 41 Pall Mall. Stockdale is notable in literary history as an early publisher of Percy Shelley (q.v.) but more so as the publisher of the book that ruined his reputation, the 1825 Memoirs of sex worker Harriette Wilson. Sales of the book were spectacular—as many as 10,000 copies were sold—but the libel suits that followed drained Stockdale’s fortune. In 1827, 1830, 1833, 1836, and 1840 he turned to the Royal Literary Fund for relief; each of his appeals was “negatived.” He was a religious bigot and a hypocrite: the vice president of the Suppression of Vice Society; a fanatic Orangeman; and the owner, editor, printer, and publisher of an unprofitable anti-Catholic newspaper, the True Briton. He was thrice bankrupt, in 1822, 1823, and 1830, and thrice imprisoned, in 1830 for assault, in 1836 for blackmail, and in 1840 for contempt of the House of Commons. On 31 Aug. 1805 in Buckingham, Buckinghamshire, he married Sophia (1781-1857), a daughter of Major Robert Milligan and his wife, Ann Woollams. There were at least half-a-dozen children by their marriage. His sister, Mary (q.v.), a poet and translator, was a bookseller in Piccadilly between 1816 and 1833. Following two years of serious illness, Stockdale died at Bushey, Hertfordshire. He was buried there, at St James’s, on 23 Feb. 1847. (ancestry.com 8 Jan. 2025; ODNB “Stockdale, John c. 1749-1814,” 8 Jan. 2025; RLF file 589; Examiner, 11 Nov. 1821; Dorset County Chronicle, 8 Dec. 1825) JC