Author: Templeman, James
Biography:
TEMPLEMAN, James (1776-1851: ancestry.com)
Pseudonym Miss Temple Edgworth
James Templeman had a short and curious career as an author. Between 1808 and 1810 he published in London a few verse “tales” or “romances” in various groupings, under slightly different titles and author-names, and with three or possibly four different publishers. Some are dedicated to Thomas Templeman, Esq., or T---T---, presumably a relative. Two earlier editions not included in this bibliography for lack of physical evidence of their existence are Alphonso and Clementina (1806) and Alcander and Lavinia (1807): they are in Allibone but it might be on the basis of an advertisement in the London Chronicle, which identifies them as having been published by Longman. After 1810 Templeman as an author vanishes from sight. The plurality of versions and the temporary adoption of a name akin to that of the popular novelist Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) seem to have been simply marketing ploys. He was most probably the James Templeman of Yorkshire, son of James Templeman (the mother’s name not recorded), who was baptised on 4 Aug. 1776 at Doncaster. Nothing is known about his education. He married Mary Farratt at St. Nicholas, Nottingham, on 9 Sept. 1802. Their first child, Caroline, was born in Nottingham in 1804 but by 1807 they had settled in London, where at least three sons were born and baptised—their father’s occupation being given as “Gentleman.” In the 1841 census he records independent means. But a man or men of this name are also on record as engaged in various businesses about the city in these years: dissolving a partnership with a Nottingham lace manufacturer in 1808; a “merchant” with premises on Hoxton Square in 1811; displaying a collection of waxworks on the Strand in 1812. By the time of the 1851 census he was a widower and a “retired purse maker” living with his married daughter Caroline Sewell, a purse maker, and her family in Bethnal Green. He died in London and was buried at St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, on 1 Dec. 1851. (ancestry.com 11 Aug. 2024; findmypast.com 11 Aug. 2024; London Chronicle 24 Nov. 1807; Allibone 3: 2369) HJ