Author: WOOD, George Horsley
Biography:
WOOD, George Horsley (1793-1874: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 22 Apr. 1793 at St. Matthew’s, Douglas, Isle of Man, the youngest of five children of Major General John Wood and his wife Jane Clark, who had married in 1787. He entered the army as ensign in 1813, was promoted to lieutenant in 1821, and went on half-pay in 1827. He served first in the 20th regiment of foot and later in the 67th. He was briefly in India but his most notable military experience was as a member of the guard of Napoleon on St. Helena (1819-21). He talked extensively about this, revisited the island in 1826, met Napoleon III in 1852, and wrote four poems on Napoleon. He spent most of the 1820s in London but returned to the Isle of Man in 1829. The work listed here was known to be his and several poems were reprinted in Poems (1853) as “Poems from a Former Volume.” It remains unattributed in the catalogues of BL, Bodley, and St. Andrew’s, but the Manx Museum gives it to him and corrects the slip by the Manx bibliographer, William Cubbon, who listed him as “George Henry Wood.” He married Eleanor (Ellen) Link (1796-1830) on 30 Nov. 1822 at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Westminster, London. They had four daughters, three of whom survived into adulthood. He then married Margaret Christian (1800-58) on 2 Feb. 1831 at St. Marylebone, Westminster, and with her had eight more children. His religious opinions were eccentric and volatile, ranging from established church through Berkeleyan idealism and unitarianism to a brief adherence to Plymouth Brethen and finally non-attendance. His metaphysical speculations appended to Poems (1853) were largely ignored. He died on 23 Feb. 1874 at Falcon Cliff Terrace, Douglas, Isle of Man. (ancestry.co.uk 17 Jan. 2023; familysearch.org 17 Jan. 2023; Katherine A. Forrest, Manx Recollections [1894], 49-59; Worcester Journal 5 Dec. 1822; Morning Post 4 Feb. 1831, 8 Jan. 1859; Hereford Journal 28 Apr. 1830; Isle of Man Times 28 Feb. 1874; William Harrison, Bibliotheca Monensis [1876], 190; Cubbon, 2: 888) AA
Other Names:
- G. H. Wood