The identity of the narrator is fixed in Gent. Mag. 1862, ii. 111). Samuel Warren the elder became a highly influential Wesleyan minister and preacher. In 1834, however, being then superintendent of the Manchester district, and jealous, it is said, of the rising influence of Dr. Jabez Bunting, he led an embittered opposition against the establishment of a theological training institution. Upon his being, in October 1834, suspended by the district committee, Warren took the step of applying to the court of chancery for an injunction against the trustees of chapels from which he was excluded. The application was refused (25 March 1835), and Warren was in the following August expelled by conference (Minutes of Conference, 1835, vii. 542 seq.; note kindly supplied by the Rev. A. Gordon). He had formed the Wesleyan Methodist Association, which went out with him, fifteen thousand strong and the body were temporarily styled ‘Warrenites.’ By amalgamations later on with other secessions from the main body [see Everett, James], they became ‘The United Methodist Free Churches,’ a flourishing body. In the meantime, in 1838, Warren was admitted to orders in the church of England by John Bird Sumner [q. v.], then bishop of Chester, and in December 1840 he was inducted into the living of All Souls', Ancoats. He died at Ardwick, Manchester, on 23 May 1862, aged 81. His portrait was engraved by W. T. Fry, after Jackson.
The future novelist studied medicine at Edinburgh in 1826–7, gaining a prize for English verse in 1827, and through it obtaining an introduction to Wilson (‘Christopher North’) and De Quincey. He left Edinburgh in 1828, and was admitted at the Inner Temple in that year. He practised as a special pleader between 1831 and 1837, when he was called to the bar. But Warren's early ambitions were literary rather than legal. In 1823 he consulted Sir Walter Scott on the propriety of publishing, and received a reply, dated 3 Aug., advising him to rely on the judgment of an intelligent bookseller. This letter, which is preserved among Warren's papers, is remarkable for an unqualified assertion by Scott, that ‘I am not the author of those novels which the world chooses to ascribe to me.’ Undeterred by Scott's cautious counsel, Warren began writing for the magazines, but met with little encouragement. His ‘Passages from the Diary of a late Physician,’ written in part during 1829, after being hawked from publisher to publisher, were at length accepted by William Blackwood. Twenty-eight of these papers, the morbid tone of which is shielded under a moral purpose, appeared in ‘Blackwood's Magazine’ at intervals between August 1830 and August 1837. Printed in collective form (1832, complete 1838), they went through numerous editions, were translated into several European languages, and extensively pirated in America, while they still sell largely in paper covers for sixpence. Their literary merit is slight, but their melodramatic power is considerable. The ‘Diary’ was attributed to (among others) Dr. John Ayrton Paris [q. v.], and the ‘Lancet’ protested strongly against the revelation of professional secrets.
Warren next published ‘A Popular and Practical Introduction to Law Studies’ (London, 1835, enlarged 1845; numerous American editions), an entertaining book under an unattractive title, which was pronounced by a glowing critic in the ‘Quarterly Review’ to contain ‘a spice of Montaigne.’ The book seems to have attracted to Warren a few legal pupils, among them Charles Reade [q. v.] A successful school-book, ‘Select Extracts from Blackstone's Commentaries’ (1837), was followed in 1840 by a tract on the ‘Opium Question,’ which ran through four editions.
The first chapter of ‘Ten Thousand a Year’ appeared in ‘Blackwood’ for October 1839, and at once excited a powerful interest. Warren was anxious to disguise the authorship, his main reason apparently being that he might ask every one what he thought of the new novel. He was enraptured when told that it ‘beat Boz hollow,’ and while forwarding successive parts to Blackwood wrote in terms of comical ecstasy about his work. ‘I knew you would all like it,’ he says in one of these letters, ‘for it is most true to human nature, and it cost me (though you may smile) a few tears while writing it. How I do love the Aubreys! How my heart yearns towards them!’ Thackeray was less benevolent towards these martyred aristocrats (cf. Book of Snobs, chap. xvi.)
When the novel was completed and appeared in three dense volumes in 1841, it had an enormous sale, was translated into French, Russian, and other languages, and was applauded in the ‘Revue des Deux Mondes’ as well as in the English reviews. The well-constructed plot turns upon the validity of certain title-deeds, and a number of legal points are involved. Warren's handling of these was criticised by experts, and was justified by the author in elaborate notes in subsequent editions. His legal portraits were declared to be caricatures, but the cleverness of the farcical portraits—
