April 06, 2015

JOSEPH BLANCO WHITE (1847)

Poet, journalist and writer of miscellaneous prose chiefly remembered as a friend of the leader of the English Romantic movement and of the High Church party in the Church of England.

A Roman Catholic priest who became a freethinker he began a journalistic career in 1808 during the French invasion of Spain as an advocate of Spanish independence.
When in 1810 the French entered Sevilla he fled to England becoming editor of a periodical founded to foment opposition to the French.

He Anglicized his name, took Anglican orders and became known as a writer.

His sonnet Night and Death (1828), extravagantly praised for its grandeur by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was his only work to be remembered after his death.

Doubt again disrupted his life. He left the Church of England and spent his last years as an active Unitarian.

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