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Author: Thomas, Rowley

Biography:

THOMAS, Rowley (1749-97: ancestry.co.uk)

Although there is no record of a birth or baptism, he was probably the Rowley Thomas who was articled for five years to an attorney, John Ashby, in Shrewsbury, on 27 March 1766, and to whom he addressed his first poem, Accommodation (1775). A reviewer called it “the production of some attorney’s clerk, who is ambitious of a fee simple in Parnassus” (MR). He married Mary Pritchard on 4 Oct. 1777 at St. Chad’s, Shrewsbury. They had two sons, Charles (1780) and William (1783). He died in Mar. 1797, aged 48, and was buried on 24 Mar. 1797 at St. Chad’s. (ancestry.co.uk 20 July 2023; findmypast.co.uk 20 July 2023; MR July 1776, 88; Shrewsbury Chronicle 8 Apr. 1775, 31 Aug. 1776, 11 Oct. 1777) AA

 

Books written (4):

Shrewsbury: Printed "for the Author", 1775
[London]: Richardson and Urquhart, [1776]
Shrewsbury/ London: [printed "for the Author" and sold by Stafford Pryse/ J. Bew], 1779
3rd edn. Shrewsbury/ London: [no publisher: printed "for the Author"], 1785