Author: Wright, John
Biography:
WRIGHT, John (1804-46?: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 19 Sept. 1804 (baptised 21 Oct.) in Sorn, Ayrshire, to Grizzel (Taylor) and James Wright, a coal-driver. (ODNB gives a birth date of 1 Sept. 1805.) He grew up in Galston, Ayrshire, but at the age of seven he was removed from school to work with his father. At thirteen, he was apprenticed to George Brown, a weaver, who encouraged him to read. Not yet knowing how to write, he composed a tragedy, “Mohamet, or, the Hegira,” and committed it to memory. He suffered from a mental disorder; the memoir in his Whole Poetical Works calls it a “monomania.” At sixteen, his marriage proposal was rejected by a young woman and this episode formed the basis for his rambling autobiographical poem, The Retrospect, which he was encouraged and assisted to publish by John Struthers, Dugald Moore, Henry Glassford Bell, and John Wilson (qq.v.). It was a critical success and, for the second edition, he travelled throughout Scotland seeking subscriptions. He also continued working as a weaver in Cambuslang, near Glasgow, and there married Margaret Chalmers on 20 June 1832. They had two children but, with his mental instability aggravated by alcohol, Wright abandoned his family. His friends published his Whole Poetical Works in 1843 in an effort to help him. He is said to have died in about 1846 after being found unconscious in the streets of Glasgow, but he may be the John Wright who died in Glasgow and was buried on 18 Jan. 1848. He was buried in the Glasgow necropolis. (ODNB 21 Dec. 2020; ancestry.co.uk 21 Dec. 2020; findmypast.co.uk 7 Feb. 2025; “Portrait of the Author,” Whole Poetical Works of John Wright [1843]) SR
Other Names:
- J. Wright