William Combe - Biography

Writer and adventurer, born in Bristol, SW England, UK. He inherited a fortune in 1762, led the life of an adventurer, and spent much time in debtors' jails. He studied at Oxford, and wrote metrical satires such as The Diaboliad (1776), but made his name with his three verse satires on popular travel-books, introducing the character of Dr Syntax.

William Combe (1741 – 19 June 1823) was a British miscellaneous writer. His cleverest piece of work was a series of imaginary letters, supposed to have been written by the second, or "wicked" Lord Lyttelton. He also wrote the letterpress for various illustrated books, and was a general hack.

Biography

The circumstances of his birth in Bristol in 1741, and parentage are somewhat doubtful, and it is questioned whether his father was a rich Bristol merchant, or a certain William Alexander, a London alderman, who died in 1762. His spurious Letters of the Late Lord Lyttelton1 (1780) imposed on many of his contemporaries, and a writer in the Quarterly Review, so late as 1851, regarded these letters as authentic, basing upon them a claim that Lyttelton was "Junius." An early acquaintance with Lawrence Sterne resulted in his Letters supposed to have been written by Yorick and Eliza (1779). in 1794–1796 he wrote the text for Boydell's History of the River Thames; in 1803 he began to write for The Times. In 1809–1811 he wrote for Ackermann's Political Magazine the famous Tour of Dr Syntax in search of the Picturesque (descriptive and moralizing verse of a somewhat doggerel type), which, owing greatly to Thomas Rowlandson's designs, had an immense success. It was published separately in 1812 and was followed by two similar Tours, "in search of Consolation," and "in search of a Wife," the first Mrs Syntax having died at the end of the first Tour. Then came Six Poems in illustration of drawings by Princess Elizabeth (1813), The English Dance of Death (1815–1816), The Dance of Life (1816–1817), The Adventures of Johnny Quae Genus (1822)--all written for Rowlandson's caricatures; Picturesque Tours along the Rhine and other rivers, Histories of Madeira, Antiquities of York, texts for Turner's Southern Coast Views, and contributions innumerable to the Literary Repository. In his later years, notwithstanding a by no means unsullied character, Combe was courted for the sake of his charming conversation and inexhaustible stock of anecdote. He died in London on 19 June 1823.

This article incorporates public domain text from: Cousin, John William (1910).