Author: Webbe, Cornelius Francis
Biography:
WEBBE, Cornelius Francis (1789-1858: ODNB)
He was baptised Cornelius Webb and buried as Cornelius Webbe, but he used both Cornelius Webbe and Cornelius Francis Webbe (and the initials C. F. W.) as an author. The baptism took place at St. George’s, Holborn, on 19 Sept. 1789; he was one of at least five children of William and Charlotte (Clarke) Webb, who had been married at St. Pancras Old Church, London, on 6 June 1786. Nothing is known of his education but he spent his life as a writer, mainly for the periodical press. He had a parallel career as a regular applicant for assistance from the RLF between 1817 and 1857: grants to him amounted to £155, several of them substantial awards of £30. When he applied in 1823 he declared that in two and a half years he had earned only £118 by his pen. He suffered from illness and accumulated distresses—among which the greatest was perhaps the burden of debt. He was the single largest contributor of original poetry to the New Monthly Magazine in 1814-17, wrote also for the London Magazine and the New European Magazine, was employed for some years as a proofreader for the Quarterly Review, and in the 1820s placed some of his work with the annuals. He was on the fringes of the Hampstead circle of Leigh Hunt and met Keats there (qq.v.); notoriously his praise of Keats appeared as an epigraph to J. G. Lockhart’s first damning review of the “Cockney School” of poetry in 1817. But Webbe soldiered on. Of two plays that he said in 1817 were under consideration by major London theatres, nothing is known. In the mid-20s when poetry had lost its market to prose fiction, Webbe began writing essays and “sketches” for the magazines instead. Later collections include The Man about Town (1838), Glances at Life, in City and Suburbs (1848), and The Absent Man (1857). In Nov. 1846 he was fortunate enough to secure a place at the Charterhouse in London but he found it difficult to manage on 10/- a week and appealed successfully to the RLF in 1857 for funding that would allow him to recover his health in the countryside. He died unmarried at the Charterhouse on 11 Aug. 1858 and was buried on 16 Aug. (ODNB 2 May 2024; ancestry.com 2 May 2024; findmypast.com 2 May 2024; RLF #366) HJ
Other Names:
- Cornelius Webb
- Cornelius Webbe