Blanchard, Samuel Laman

(1804-1845)

   Born in Great Yarmouth but brought up in East London. When his father refused help for his Samuel to attend university, he became a clerk, a task he found distasteful, so he determined to try the stage. He contributed dramatic sketches to the Drama and for a little while joined a traveling troop of actors. For three years he was secretary to the Zoological Society. In 1828 he published Lyric Offerings, a collection of verse, which he dedicated to Charles Lamb, and contributed prose and verse to the Monthly Magazine, for which he became acting editor in 1831. He then edited the True Sun (a daily liberal paper), the Court Journal, the Courier, and George Cruikshank's Omnibus, a monthly magazine to which he contributed several poems. Some of his poems are: "Hidden Joys," "Infancy Asleep," "Lines Written on the First Page of Mulberry Leaves," "Love Seeking a Lodging," "Nell Gwynne's Looking-glass," "Science and Good-Humour," "The Mother's Hope," "Today," "Wishes of Youth," "Yesterday" (a melancholy poem).

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Oldpoetry (www.oldpoetry.com). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Verse, Burton Egbert Stevenson. New York: Henry Holt and Company 1953. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk).