Life of Frederick Marryat

Life of Frederick Marryat

The materials for a life of Marryat are scanty, and I have acknowledged my obligation to them in the text. Mrs. Ross Church collected, in 1872, all the surviving knowledge about her fathers lifeall of it, that is, which the family thought it right to publish to the world. The present little book has no pretensions to be founded on new materials. My object has only been to make the best use I could of already published matterto tell what story there is to tell in the clearest possible manner, and to add the best estimate of Marryats work and position in letters that I could supply. Frederick Marryat, one of the most brilliant, and the least fairly recognized, of English novelists, was born in Westminster, on the 10th July, 1792, some seven months before the outbreak of the Great War. He was the second son of Joseph Marryat, M.P. for Sandwich, chairman of the committee of Lloyds, and Colonial Agent for the island of Grenada. His mother was a Bostonian, of a loyalist family. Her maiden name was Geyeror according to Mrs. Ross Churchs life of her father, Von Geyerand the family is said to have been of Hessian origin. The Marryats themselves were a Suffolk stock. In Marshalls Naval Biography, which appeared during Marryats own life, the novelist is said to have descended from one of the numerous Huguenot refugees who settled in the Eastern Counties during the persecutions of the sixteenth century. The family version of its history, as given by Mrs. Ross Church, contains a longer and more splendid pedigree, going back even to knights who came over with Richard Conqueror. These things, though set forth with faith[12] no doubt, are to be received with polite reserve by the judicious reader. For the rest, whatever the remote origin of the Marryats may have been, they were during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries very distinctly middle-class peopledissenting ministers, doctors, or business menmanifestly of good parts and industry. Some of them wrote sermons and printed them. Thomas Marryat, the novelists grandfather, was a doctor and the author of a medical book. His father was, as the places he held show, a prosperous man; and the future novelist entered the world under fairly favourable circumstances. There was, it is clear, no want of money, and the family were active people with a marked tendency to use their pens. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 53796
Author: Hannay, David
Release Date: Dec 23, 2016
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Robertson, Eric S. (Eric Sutherland)