Jenner, Charles

(1736-1774)

   Novelist and poet clergyman, the eldest son of Charles Jenner, also a clergyman, he was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He had the livings of Claybrook in Leicestershire and of Craneford St. John, Northamptonshire. His first volume of poems was published in 1766 and republished in 1767. He published another volume of poems in 1773 and 1773, Town Eclogues. His only novel, The Placid Man, or Memoirs of Sir Charles Beville, was published in 1770 and republished in 1773. In 1767 he published Letters from Altamont to his Friend in the Country and essays, and in 1771, Letters from Lothario to Penelope, miscellaneous papers, which included two dramas, Lucinda, and The Man of Family. He composed and published a song, "The Syren," and in his novel and other of his writings, he showed much knowledge of music and musical literature. He died at St. Omer, France, and a monument was erected to his memory in Claybrook Church by Lady Craven, with commemorative verses of her own. Some of his other poems: "Elegy to the Memory of Lord Lyttelton," "The Destruction of Nineveh," "The Gift of Tongues."

   Sources: An Antholog y of World Poetry. Mark Van Doren, ed. Reynal and Hitchcock, Inc., 1936. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Gentleman's Magazine (http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ilej/journals/srchgm.htm). 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 New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 2003.