John Doran (writer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John Doran, portrait engraved by Joseph Brown from a photograph

John Doran (born March 11, 1807 in London , † January 25, 1878 ibid) was a British publicist and writer .

life and work

Both of John Doran's parents were Irish. His father, who was also called John Doran, came from Drogheda in County Louth , Ireland , immigrated to London after the suppression of the Irish rebellion of 1798 , established himself as a naval supplier and was caught by the French while visiting the English fleet and spent three years in France, where he learned French perfectly. He passed these language skills on to his son. The latter graduated from Matheson's Academy in Cavendish Square in London's West End as a young lad . Before he was 17 he lost both parents.

Due to his excellent knowledge of French, Doran was appointed teacher of George Murray , the then eight-year-old eldest son of James Murray, 1st Baron Glenlyon , in early 1823 and then traveled with his pupil to mainland Europe. Before leaving England, he had begun writing for the London Literary Chronicle (published in the Athenaeum in 1828 ) , for which he wrote many articles during his stay abroad. A collection of his Parisian sketches and letters published in this journal appeared in 1828 under the title Sketches and Reminiscences . At the age of 17 he had also written the melodrama Justice, or the Venetian jew , which was performed on April 8, 1824 at the Surrey Theater in London.

From 1828 to 1837 Doran taught Lord Rivers and the sons of Lord Harewood and Lord Portman . From 1830 he translated works by French, German, Latin and Italian poets for the Bath Journal , with Béranger and Catullus among his favorite authors. On July 3, 1834, in Reading, he married Emma, ​​the daughter of Captain Gilbert, and settled for some time in Hay-a-Park Cottage in Knaresborough . He had a son, Alban Doran, and a daughter, Florence, who married Andreas Holtz of Twyford Abbey near Ealing.

The first major work by Doran, who is distinguished as a writer by well-reading and anecdotal wealth and is always entertaining, was his History and antiquities of the borough and town of Reading in Berkshire (1835). After giving up his last teaching post, he traveled the European continent for about two or three years and received a doctorate in philosophy from the Philipps University of Marburg . After returning to England, he made literary work his profession and now lived on St. Peter's Square in Hammersmith, London . From 1841 to 1852 he was the editor of the Church and State Gazette for an annual salary of 100 pounds, with which he seemed perfectly satisfied.

In 1852 Doran published the memoirs of Marie Thérèse Charlotte de Bourbon under the title Filia dolorosa . Mrs. Romer had already written the first 115 pages, but after her subsequent death Doran completed the work. Also in 1852 he published a new edition of Charles Anthons edition of the Anabasis of Xenophon . In 1853 he wrote a biography of Edward Young , which preceded a new edition of his poem Night Thoughts and was included in the first volume of Young's Complete Works in the following year .

Soon thereafter, Doran became a permanent employee of the Athenaeum and became a close friend of the editor of this literary magazine, William Hepworth Dixon , whom he represented during his absence. At the same time he wrote various popular books, such as Table Traits and Something on Them (1854, 4th ed. 1868), Habits and Men (1854), Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover (2 vols., 1855; 4 Ed. 1875), Knights and their Days (1856), Monarchs retired from Business (2 vols., 1857) and History of Court Fools (1858). In 1858 he also published the Bentley Ballads , which had several editions. His work New Pictures and Old Panels appeared in 1859 , and at that time he also published, for the first time based on original manuscripts, The Last Journals of Horace Walpole in two volumes . Biographical works were again Book of the Princes of Wales (1860) and Memoir of Queen Adelaide (3rd ed. 1861).

Doran's most artistic work is Their Majesties' Servants , a history of the English stage from Betterton to Kean (2 vols., 1860; revised edition by Robert W. Love, 3 vols., 1887; edition in one vol. 1896). The next writing he wrote in 1868 in two volumes Saints and Sinners, or in the Church and about it . In the same year he edited Henry Theodore Tuckerman's The Collector , a series of essays on books, magazines, pictures, inns, authors, doctors, vacations, actors and preachers. In August 1869 he succeeded Hepworth Dixon as editor of the Athenaeum for about a year after the death of Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 1st Baronet . Immediately after the siege of Paris was lifted, he published A Souvenir of the War of 1870-1 . After William John Thoms retired in 1873, he also took over the editing of the widely read literary weekly Notes and Queries , which he ran until 1878.

About Elizabeth Montagu , Doran wrote A Lady of the Last Century illustrated in her unpublished letters (with a biographical sketch and a chapter on blue stockings , 1873). He also edited "Mann" and Manners at the Court of Florence 1740-86 (2 vols., 1876), Sir Horace Mann's letters to Horace Walpole. Finally, he wrote London in the Jacobite Times (2 vols., 1877), Memoirs of our Great Towns, with Anecdotic Gleanings concerning their Worthies and their Oddities (1878; 2nd ed. 1882) and In and about Drury Lane (posthumously 1885 ), an appendix to Their Majesties' Servants . He died on January 25, 1878 at the age of 70 in the London borough of Notting Hill and was buried in Kensal Green the following January 29 .

literature

personal data
SURNAME Doran, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British publicist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH March 11, 1807
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1878
Place of death London