Baker, Henry

(1698-1774)

   London-born naturalist, author, minor poet and Fellow of the Royal Society whose fame rests on his accumulating a fortune based on his method for teaching deaf children. In 1728 (under the name of Henry Stonecastle) he and Daniel Defoe (whose daughter he married) set up the Universal Spectator and Weekly Journal, a copy of which is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. He wrote The Microscope Made Easy (1743) and Employment for the Microscope (1753). He is credited with introducing the Alpine strawberry and the rhubarb plant into England. His poem collections: Invocation of Health, 1723. Original Poems, 1723, reprinted in 1725. The Universe, a Poem intended to restrain the Pride of Man, 1727. Medulla Poetarum Romanorum, 1737 (a selection from the Roman poets, with translations). Some of his other poems: "The Declaimer," "Kitty's Dream," "Love," "The Rapture."

   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). Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). 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 National Portrait Gallery (www.npg. org.uk). The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press 2003.