Author: Wilmot, Edward
Biography:
WILMOT, Edward (1801-1874: findmypast.com)
The author’s preface to Ugolino (1828) seeks indulgence for “a first attempt” at publication and pre-emptively denies that his title poem is an imitation of either Dante or of The Prisoner of Chillon by Byron (q.v.), but a newspaper review in The Atlas dismissed the poem as a poor imitation of Dante and Byron though a “creditable failure.” Wilmot was presumably discouraged and never ventured into print again. He was Anglo-Irish gentry, born on 4 Feb. 1801 at Cork in Ireland, the son of Robert Rogers Wilmot, barrister and Recorder of Cork, and his wife Elizabeth Hester Chetwode, who had married at Liverpool in 1798. He graduated BA from Trinity College Dublin in 1824. On 29 Apr. 1830 he married Lady Janet Jean Erskine, youngest daughter of the (Scottish) Earl of Mar at Beighton, Derby; they went on to have five children. In 1839 Wilmot inherited an estate and assumed by royal licence the surname and arms of Chetwode in addition to Wilmot. They made their home at Woodbrook, Queen’s County (Laois), Ireland. She died in 1861 at 3 Belgrave Square, Monkstown, Ireland. He lived for some time in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, but died at his London home on Stanford Road, Kensington, on 9 May 1874. (findmypast.com 24 June 2024; ancestry.com 24 June 2024; O’Donoghue; “Wilmots of Glanmire Cork,” youwho.ie 24 June 2024; The Atlas 20 Jul. 1828; SJC 6 May 1830; LES 13 May 1874; Cheltenham Chronicle 27 Oct. 1874) HJ