Augustus Prinsep

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Portrait sketch of 13-year-old Prinsep by his brother James, 1816
Illustrations for Prinsep's Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen's Land , 1833

Augustus Prinsep (born August 31, 1803 in London , † October 10, 1830 in Australia ) was an English artist, writer and civil servant. He was particularly famous for his posthumously published book The Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen's Land .

Life

Prinsep was born as the eighth child and youngest son of John Prinsep. He was educated at Haileybury College. He then traveled to India, where he arrived in Calcutta in July 1822 at the age of 18. Prinsep worked there as an employee of the East India Company . In 1827 he was promoted to Commissioner of Pergunnah Palamu District. In June 1828 he married Elizabeth Acworth Ommanney. He was then diagnosed with tuberculosis and his doctors advised him to leave India. Prinsep decided to emigrate to Australia and recorded his travels in detail in his diary and letters to his wife. In September 1829 he finally reached Hobart ( Van Diemens Land ) in Tasmania via Batavia in the Dutch East Indies ( Indonesia ) . Despite hoping to regain his health, he died on another voyage at sea.

His wife published his diary and the letters addressed to her as a book under the title Diary of a Journey from Calcutta to Van Diemens Land. The book achieved great popularity and excellent reviews, and it has been translated into many languages.

Elizabeth also published eleven lithographs, the majority of which may have been engraved from drawings by her husband Augustus. The rest of the engravings are believed to be based on drawings by Elizabeth herself and Prinsep's brother Thomas.

Prinsep's book The Baboo; and Other Tales Descriptive of Society in India appeared in London in 1834. His brother Henry Thoby Prinsep noted that he himself had written the last five or six chapters of the unfinished work. Karl Andree's German translation with the title Der Bäbu - Pictures of Life from East India was used as a template for Heinrich Marschner's opera Der Bäbu , which premiered in Hanover in 1838.

Works

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography at Design & Art Australia Online, accessed August 11, 2018.
  2. ↑ 'Augustus in a rage, Kenton Street' - PRINSEP, James (1799-1840) on douglasstewart.com.au (PDF), p. 35, accessed on August 11, 2018.
  3. ↑ Biography in the database "British Travel Writing" of the University of Wolverhampton (English), accessed on August 12, 2018.
  4. ^ Catalog entry for the score of Der Bäbu in the Répertoire International des Sources Musicales .
personal data
SURNAME Prinsep, Augustus
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English artist, writer and civil servant
DATE OF BIRTH August 31, 1803
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH October 10, 1830
Place of death Australia