Author: Wynne, John Huddlestone
Biography:
WYNNE, John Huddlestone (1742-88: ODNB)
Wynne was an eccentric character and had an eventful life. There are more anecdotes than firm facts available about him but the broad outlines of his writing career are confirmed by records in the public domain. He was born on 6 Jan. 1742 and baptised on 1 Feb. at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, the son of Edward and Elizabeth Wynne. He was initially sent to St. Paul’s School but following the death of his mother he was apprenticed at the age of 13 to a printer in the Stationers’ Company. As an apprentice he began sending contributions to periodicals. But he did not like the work and once out of his indentures he joined the EIC as a lieutenant, serving for only two years in India. Back in London, he married “a young woman of property” (ODNB) but was unable to secure her legacy of £1000 from her father, a Lambeth mason. Her first name was Eleanor. They had a son, Charles Edward, born on 13 Dec. 1770 and baptised at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, on 17 Jan. 1771, and probably two other children for whom no birth record has been found. Wynne was a notoriously irascible man, and he and his wife eventually separated; their son published a memoir of him in the Monthly Magazine in Aug. 1806. Wynne turned to hack writing and editing for London publishers, and occasionally exercised his old trade as a printer. Ironically perhaps, apart from a General History of Ireland (1772) which had multiple editions, his most successful works were educational verses and narratives for children, especially the Choice Emblems (1772)—verse emblems with prose explanations--composed originally for the nine-year-old son of William Henry Kerr, Earl of Ancram (1710-75). Wynne was lamed in an accident with a coach in 1778 and used a crutch thereafter. His last original work was a novel, The Child of Chance, or, The Adventures of Harry Hazard (1786). Wynne died at St. Thomas’s Hospital and was buried at St. Thomas’s, Southwark, on 25 Nov. 1788. (ODNB 28 Jul. 2024; ancestry.com 28 July 2024; findmypast.com 28 July 2024) HJ
Other Names:
- J. H. Wynne