Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, John (fl.1827)

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1400436Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 30 — Jones, John (fl.1827)1892Daniel Lleufer Thomas

JONES, JOHN (fl. 1827), verse-writer, was born in 1774 at Clearwell in the Forest of Dean, where his father was gardener in the service of Charles Wyndham (who assumed the name of Elwin), and his mother kept a small shop in the village. After receiving only so much education as enabled him to read and write, he became an errand-boy, and afterwards, at the age of seventeen, a domestic servant at Bath. He employed his leisure in self-cultivation, read poetry, and began writing verses. In January 1804 he entered the service of W. S. Bruere of Kirkby Hall, near Catterick, Yorkshire, and in the summer of 1827 sent a few specimens of his verse to Southey, who was then at Harrogate. The result was the publication, in 1831, of ‘Attempts in Verse by John Jones, an old Servant; with some account of the Writer written by himself, and an Introductory Essay on the Lives and Works of our uneducated Poets by Robert Southey,’ London, 8vo. Jones's verses also form the appendix to Southey's ‘Lives of Uneducated Poets,’ London, 1836, 12mo. Although Southey saw in the verses abundant proof of talent, his opinion of them was not high. Jones's volume was reviewed in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ and is credited there with ‘the stamp of mediocrity.’

[Sketch of his own Life by Jones in the Attempts in Verse; Edinb. Rev. liv. 69–84; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.]

D. Ll. T.

Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.170
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line

Page Col. Line  
130 i 16 f.e. Jones, John (fl. 1827): for Edwin read Elwin