Author: THIMBLEBY, William
Biography:
THIMBLEBY, William (1804-21: findmypast.co.uk)
He was born on 26 Mar. 1804 at Gedney-Dyke, Lincolnshire, the son of John Thimbleby, a sometime Wesleyan preacher. His mother’s name is not known. He developed a strong attachment to poetry at an early age with the usual self-taught poetic education consisting of the Bible, Gray’s Elegy, Pope’s Essay on Man, and Thomson’s Seasons. He wrote "An Address to the Scholars of Gedney-Dyke Sunday-School" before the age of twelve. He laboured in the fields in the summer but in the winter went to the local village school where he acquired some knowledge of arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, algebra, and Latin. In 1820 he developed symptoms of consumption (which had already taken the lives of his mother and brother) and he died on 19 Jan. 1821. Like most consumptives, he knew he was dying and wrote "Lines written in the Prospect of Death" and a prose piece "The Immortality of the Soul" in preparation. After his death, publication of his poems was announced as in progress but it was several years before Henry Clay, of Moulton, edited them with a memoir. (findmypast.co.uk 3 Jul. 2021; Stamford Mercury 2 Feb. 1821, 8 Jul. 1825; H[enry] Clay, "Memoirs of the Life of the Author" in Thimbleby, Poems on Various Occasions [1825] vii-xvi; John Clare Collection, Northampton Central Library, Item 375) AA