Author: Tobin, John
Biography:
TOBIN, John (1770-1804: ODNB)
He was born in Salisbury, the third of eight children. Both parents, Elizabeth (Webbe) and James Tobin, owned sugar plantations in Nevis in the West Indies. As a Bristol merchant, James Tobin campaigned against the abolition of slavery; his eldest son James Webbe Tobin (1767-1838), who was a friend of the Bristol circle of Southey, Coleridge, and Davy (qq.v.), campaigned for it; John, though very close to his brother, does not seem to have taken a strong stand one way or the other. Tobin had a good classical education in Southampton and Bristol, then was articled to a lawyer at Lincoln's Inn in London. He disliked the law, loved the theatre, and tried desperately to have a play accepted at one of the London theatres but for one reason or another his scripts, thirteen in all, were rejected with the exception of a trivial farce staged in 1803. By that time his brother James was sharing his chambers: Coleridge stayed with them early in 1804 before leaving for Malta. Tobin was obliged by failing health to leave London later that year but before going he submitted one last play, The Honey Moon--already rejected by Covent Garden--to Drury Lane, where it was accepted and went into rehearsal. In late November Tobin sailed for the West Indies but died of tuberculosis on the first night of the voyage. He was buried in Cobh, Ireland, in what is now known as the Lusitania Graveyard. The Honey Moon was a great success on the stage. Tobin's brother James undertook the role of literary executor, and over the next decade or so more of Tobin's plays were performed, but all his publications are posthumous. In 1805 James Tobin became acquainted with another abolitionist, Elizabeth Benger (q.v.), who brought out four more previously unpublished works of Tobin's along with Memoirs in 1820. (ODNB 26 Nov. 2020; O'Donoghue)