Samuel Warren | |
---|---|
Born | Rackery Farm near
Wrexham,
Denbighshire, UK | 23 May 1808
Died | 29 July 1877 London, UK | (aged 69)
Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
Occupation(s) | British writer, lawyer and politician |
Samuel Warren (23 May 1807 – 29 July 1877) was a British barrister, novelist and MP.
He was born in Wales at Rackery Farm near Wrexham, Denbighshire, the son of Anne (née Williams), who died in 1823, and Samuel Warren (1781–1862), a Wesleyan Methodist minister, who formed a breakaway group, and in later life was an Anglican priest in Ancoats. [1] [2] The memoirs of Samuel Dousland Waddy, an apprentice in 1820 to a London linen draper, state that Warren was also an apprentice there. [3] It is thought by Dunlop that as a teenager Warren worked in a medical capacity, perhaps as an apprentice to an apothecary. [4]
Warren attended the University of Edinburgh to study medicine, in the years 1826 to 1828, where he won prizes and attention, but did not take a degree. He then entered the Inner Temple, studying law and acting as a special pleader, and was called to the bar in 1837. [4] In 1852 he was made Recorder of Hull.
Entering politics, Warren sat in the House of Commons for Midhurst 1856–1859, and was a Master in Lunacy 1859–77. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in April 1835. [5] He died in London.
Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician, by Warren but initially published anonymously, [6] was a series of sensational tales, fictional case histories, published first in Blackwood's Magazine from August 1830 to 1837. It was hugely successful. [4] [7] The frame story to the series is of "early struggles" of a young medical man, and has been taken to contain embellished autobiographical material. [8] In the preface to fifth edition (1855) was Warren's statement that "I was six years actively engaged in the practical study of physic". [9]
The structure and use of professional anecdotes as a vehicle are now considered foundational for later mainstream crime fiction. [10] The tales contributed also to a sub-genre of the short story, known as "Blackwood's fiction", which often used the supernatural, or apparent supernatural, and owed something to John Ferriar and Samuel Hibbert-Ware. [11] Proposed bookends are an 1821 story by William Maginn, and one by Samuel Ferguson in 1837, when Warren's series had concluded. [12]
Warren was also the author of two novels:
The influence of Warren on Charles Dickens has been traced, for example in Bleak House. [4]
Warren was also a legal writer. His Select Extracts from Blackstone's Commentaries (first edition 1836) was with John William Smith, whose name did not appear. [13]
Warren married in 1831 Elizabeth (Eliza) Ballenger (died 1868), daughter of James Ballenger of Woodford Bridge House, Essex, who had married in 1824 W. Vanhouse; they had two sons and a daughter. [4] [14] [15] Eliza's father, who died in 1830, was a sugar refiner in Davenant Street, Whitechapel. [16] [17]
The elder son, Samuel Lilckendey Warren (born 1835), graduated B.A. in 1859 and became an Anglian priest. [14] [18] The younger son, Edward Walpole Warren (1838–1903), was another cleric, a Cambridge graduate. He was rector of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Manhattan, from 1887 to 1895. [19]
Warren married, secondly, Louisa Beaumont in 1871. [4]