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Author: Worgan, John Dawes

Biography:

WORGAN, John Dawes (1791-1809: Select Poems)

There is a very full account of Worgan's short life in Select Poems--the first half of it composed by himself--and yet the names of his parents are not certain. They may have been Richard and Maria (Tippett) Worgan, married in Bristol on 27 Sept. 1790. He was in any case born in Bristol on 8 Nov. 1791 into a devout Christian family. His father, a member of the C of E who would have liked to become a clergyman, was a watchmaker. His mother was a member of the United Brethren or Moravian Church. Their son attended various schools in the Bristol area and was happy at a Moravian one, but he was destined to follow his father in trade and came home to assist him during a period of illness in 1802. After his father died in 1803, however, he set his sights on the church and in short order attained the necessary classical education at a day school in Bristol. In Sept. 1806 he joined the household of the smallpox pioneer Dr. Edward Jenner, at Berkeley, as tutor to their son. He had literary ambitions which brought him into correspondence with William Hayley (q.v.), who encouraged him. He fell in love with a young woman who returned his affection, but her family disapproved and they were parted. And he was not in good health: he suffered two episodes of typhus in 1807 and 1808, and at last died of "pulmonary consumption" at Jenner's house on 25 Jul. 1809. He was buried as a dissenter, a "Primitive Methodist." Hayley edited the posthumous volume of his poems and correspondence, which is dedicated to Jenner. The Quarterly Review ungraciously expressed doubt "that Worgan, had he lived, would have produced any thing of a strikingly original cast."  On the other hand, Chatterton's editor Edward Gardner (q.v.), who met Worgan in Jenner's household, declared that he "equals any Poet this Kingdom has produced, and I would not be understood to make any allowance for his Juvenile Years." (ancestry.com 10 Mar. 2021; QR May 1810, 431-9; findmypast.com 10 Mar 2021; John Baron, Life of Edward Jenner, M.D. [1838], Edward Gardner, "Memoirs," Royal College of Surgeons MS 0016/8; contributions from AA)

 

Books written (3):

London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1810
Philadelphia: John Richardson, 1822