Author: Wickenden, William
Biography:
WICKENDEN, William S. (1796-1864: ancestry.com)
Pseudonym The Bard of the Forest
The ninth of ten children of John and Ann (Stephens) Wickenden, he was baptised at Awre with Blakeney, Gloucestershire, on 6 Apr. 1796. The “S.” that he gives as a middle name on some title-pages is not in the baptismal record but may stand for his mother’s maiden name, Stephens. After his father died in 1810, he worked with other members of the family on their farm at Awre in the Forest of Dean, which was still being worked by his older brother Henry in 1841. Many details of his life story are derived from statements in his books and particularly from his autobiography, Some Remarkable Passages in the Life of . . . the Bard of the Forest (1848). Despite a limited education, he aspired to a university education, and with the encouragement of the pioneering physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823), to whom he dedicated his first book The Rustic’s Lay in 1817, he got it. (Jenner gave him the pseudonym that he later used consistently.) While preparing for university, he published two novels, Count Glarus (1819)—with poems interspersed—and Gleddyn: a Welch National Tale (1821). He was admitted as sizar to St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1821 (BA 1825), was ordained deacon in 1825 and priest in 1826, and filled various curacies between 1825 and 1834. He wanted to marry his housekeeper at one point but his bishop opposed the marriage so he gave it up and never married. Ill health affected his ability to fulfil parish duties (he lost his voice) but he wrote extensively, mainly prose fiction, history, and autobiography. The RLF provided some support 1840-59 but he resigned from a place as a “poor brother” in the Charterhouse. “Australasia,” composed as a Cambridge prize poem but unsuccessful in competition, was published in the 1827 collection of verse and sometimes appears as a separate title. By 1851 he was living in lodgings in London. He died at the London Hospital in Whitechapel on 6 Feb. 1864 and was buried on 13 Feb. in the Tower Hamlets cemetery, leaving effects valued at under £1000. (ancestry.com 2 June 2024; findmypast.com 2 June 2024; Jason Griffiths, “Rev. William Wickenden” in readingtheforest.co.uk; ACAD; CCEd 2 June 2024; RLF #1002) HJ
Other Names:
- W. S. Wickenden