Author: Tyler, William
Biography:
TYLER, William (1796-1863: ancestry.co.uk)
Although no details of his baptism have been found, he gave his place of birth as Haddenham, Buckinghamshire, in the Censuses. His father’s details appear on his 1838 marriage certificate: John Tyler, farmer. Nothing is known of his education but probably by 1815 he had moved to Great Marlow where he was a linen and woollen draper in West Street with his brother Joseph. Shelley (q.v.) moved to Albion House in West Street in 1817 and Tyler seems to have known him well enough to correct Thomas Medwin’s (q.v.) claim that The Revolt of Islam (1818) had been written in Venice. In the Preface to Woodland Echoes (1824), Tyler stated that “On a small island, near Medmenham Abbey, Mr Shelley composed ‘The Revolt of Islam’ and in Marlow, the ‘Maid Marian’”--and elaborated further in a letter to Windsor and Eton Express of 13 Nov. 1824, reprinted in obituaries of Shelley. (Medwin incorporated Tyler’s corrections and probably met him when he visited Marlow in 1835 but did not name him. In 1839 Mary Shelley added a hagiographical note to The Revolt of Islam highlighting Shelley’s help to poor oppressed lacemakers in Marlow.) He married Anne Rose on 5 July 1838 at St. Anne’s, Soho, Westminster, London. With her mother and sister, she was a milliner and dressmaker, also in West Street. After marriage her mother Ann and unmarried sister Charlotte would live with them. By 1831 he had also become a land agent and postmaster and was considered minor gentry rather than trade. He became a respected member of Marlow’s Literary and Scientific Institution and in 1856 gave a paper entitled “Knowledge is Power” at Salem Chapel. His wife died in that year and he moved to Reading where he continued to live with his sister-in-law, Charlotte. He died, aged 67, on 19 Aug. 1863 at 49 King’s Road, Reading, having suffered from paralysis for ten years. (ancestry.co.uk 6 Sept. 2022; findmypast.co.uk 6 Sept. 2022; Reading Mercury 2 Feb. 1856; Bucks Advertiser 16 Feb. 1856; Annual Obituary [1825] 9: 453-57; Berkshire Chronicle 29 Aug. 1863; Pigot’s Directory 1830-31, 1844; Thomas Medwin, The Life of P.B. Shelley [1847], 1: 299-310; P. B. Shelley, Complete Poetry [1839], 1: 374-80; Adam Baxter, The Marlow Society, 6 Sept. 2022) AA