Author: Strange, T.
Biography:
STRANGE, T. (fl 1803-4)
Strange appears to have published only one work, a patriotic exhortation to Britons to beware of Napoleon Buonaparte. At least four reviews approved of the sentiments; two called it “spirited” or “animated,” and both of those inferred from a motto or epigraph that the author was “advanced in years” though enjoying a “vigorous and green old age.” The title page would have informed them that he was the master of an academy at Watlington, Oxfordshire. Contemporary newspaper advertisements confirm his position as master of a boarding school where Greek, Latin, and English were taught, as well as writing “in the various hands now practised” and arithmetic and book-keeping. He took over the school in 1802; his advertisements peter out after 1804. No convincing matches have been found in public records of birth, marriage, or death, and he might have come from—and moved on to--any part of the country. He does not appear to have been a graduate of a university, and would surely have displayed credentials if he had had them. There is a younger Thomas Strange of Banbury, Oxfordshire, but he was born in Surrey about 1796 and became a watchmaker. (ancestry.com 11 Dec. 2024; findmypast.com 11 Dec. 2024; Oxford Journal 21 Jan. 1786, 13 Mar. 1802, 15 Jan. 1803; MR [1804], 437; British Critic [1804], 437; Monthly Mirror [1804], 320; Anti-Jacobin Review [1804], 308)