William Jerdan, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

William Jerdan

Scottish journalist

Date of Birth: 16-Apr-1782

Place of Birth: Kelso, Scotland, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 11-Jul-1869

Profession: editor, journalist

Zodiac Sign: Aries


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About William Jerdan

  • William Jerdan (16 April 1782 – 11 July 1869), Scottish journalist, was born at Kelso, Scotland. During the years between 1799 and 1806, he spent short periods in a country lawyer's office, a London West India merchant's counting house, an Edinburgh solicitor's chambers, and held the position of surgeon's mate on board H.M.
  • guardship Gladiator in Portsmouth Harbour, under his uncle, who was surgeon. He went to London in 1806 and became a newspaper reporter.
  • He was in the lobby of the House of Commons on 11 May 1812, when Spencer Perceval was shot, and was the first to seize the assassin.
  • By 1812, he had become editor of The Sun, a semi-official Tory paper started by John Heriot in 1792; he was still there in 1815 and occasionally inserted literary articles, then quite an unusual proceeding; but a quarrel with the chief proprietor brought that engagement to a close in 1817.
  • He passed next to the editor's chair of the Literary Gazette, which he conducted with success for thirty-four years. Jerdan's position as editor brought him into contact with many distinguished writers.
  • An account of his friends, among whom Canning was a special intimate, is to be found in his Men I have Known (1866); the men featured in the book include William Buckland, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edward Forbes, F.R.S.
  • (with a colorful, eyewitness account of one of Forbes' early oceanographic dredging operations) and William Wordsworth.
  • When Jerdan retired in 1850 from the editorship of the Literary Gazette, his pecuniary affairs were far from satisfactory.
  • A testimonial of over £900 was subscribed by his friends; and in 1853 a government pension of 100 guineas was conferred on him by Lord Aberdeen.
  • He published his Autobiography in 4 volumes from 1852-1853.

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