Author: White, Henry Kirke
Biography:
WHITE, Henry Kirke (1785-1806: ODNB)
Born at Nottingham, he was the third of six children of John White, a butcher, and his wife Mary Neville, daughter of a framework knitter. A Mrs. Garrington was his first teacher and she recognised his academic potential, as did the Rev. John Blanchard when White began studying at his school. At the age of about fourteen, he started work in the textile industry before beginning training in law offices in Nottingham. In the evenings, he studied classical and modern languages. He submitted verse to periodicals and was encouraged when he won prizes from the Monthly Receptor in 1800 and 1801. He hoped to raise money to study at university for the church by publishing Clifton Grove but was hurt by a negative review in the Monthly Review which responded to comments in his dedication and preface where he described his verse as the “unpremeditated effusions of a Boy.” When White wrote to complain, he received a more measured reply and the book attracted attention from Robert Southey (q.v.) who later edited the posthumous collection of White’s writings and wrote a memoir. Although he had failed to earn what was needed from his publication, White persisted in his desire to enter the church and was attracted in particular by evangelical Anglicanism. Through George Simeon, he secured a sizarship at St. John’s, Cambridge, which he took up in 1805. He pushed himself relentlessly, hoping to win a scholarship, but he was already suffering from tuberculosis and, after a period of declining health, he died in his rooms in college. He was buried in All Saint’s churchyard, Cambridge. In his memoir, Southey described the moment of opening the large box of White’s unpublished writings and compared him to Thomas Chatterton as a genius who died tragically young. The posthumous collections of his poems and essays remained popular through the nineteenth century. (ODNB 29 Dec. 2020; Robert Southey, “Memoir,” in The Remains of Henry Kirke White of Nottingham [1807])
Other Names:
- Kirke White