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Author: Tupper, Martin Farquhar

Biography:

TUPPER, Martin Farquhar (1810-89: ODNB)

He was born on 17 July 1810 and baptised at St. Marylebone, London, on 13 Aug., the eldest son of a successful physician, Martin Tupper (1780-1844), and his wife Ellin Devis Marris (1785-1847), daughter of the landscape painter Robert Marris (1750-1827). His years of schooling were made difficult by a pronounced stammer which he overcame in later life, but he attended Charterhouse and Christ Church College, Oxford (matric. 1828, BA 1832, MA 1835, DCL 1847). He also studied law at Lincoln’s Inn and was called to the bar in 1835, but never practised. His first two poetical works, listed here, were collections of many short poems, some originally written to accompany engravings (not included), and conveying his confident Christian faith. On 26 Nov. 1835 at St. Pancras he married his cousin Isabella Devis (1811-85); they had eight children, the last of whom died in infancy. (The surviving daughters all became writers and in 1864 published Poems by Three Sisters.) Tupper’s literary career was launched in Jan. 1838 with Proverbial Philosophy, a collection of aphorisms set as lines of semi-scriptural verse. It was reprinted and enlarged many times. By 1840 it was already a household word as “Tupper’s Proverbial Philosophy,” and its popularity in North America led to a tour of the northeastern US and Canada in 1851. On the strength of his profits and some inherited property and wealth, Tupper lived as a country gentleman at Albury House, Surrey. There he steadily produced writings in various genres: poetry, essays, novels, and plays. He was elected FRS in 1845 and made DCL in 1847. In 1873 he was granted a civil pension of £120. But as his work went out of fashion, his income was reduced, and in 1880 the Tuppers gave up Albury House and moved to 13 Cintra Park, Upper Norwood, London, where he suffered a stroke in 1886 shortly after publishing his autobiography, My Life as an Author. He died on 29 Nov. 1889 and was buried at the Saxon church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Albury on 3 Dec. (ODNB 11 Sept. 2024; ancestry.com 11 Sept. 2024; findmypast.com 11 Sept. 2024)

 

Other Names:

  • M. F. T.
 

Books written (2):

London: James Nisbet, 1832
Oxford/ London: Wheeler/ Dalton, 1835