Ebenezer Jones
Ebenezer Jones was an English poet who wrote a good deal of poetry of very unequal merit, but at his best shows a true poetic vein. He was befriended by Robert Browning and Christina Rossetti.
Life
He was born in Canonbury Square, Islington, London, on 20 January 1820. His father was of Welsh background; his mother, Hannah Sumner, was of an Essex family. They were strict Calvinists. His father died, and at the age of 17 he worked as a clerk in a city firm connected with the tea-trade.Jones was for a short time a follower of Robert Owen. He assisted his friend W. J. Linton with political journalism, and worked for the radical publishers John Cleave and Henry Hetherington. Jones went down with consumption, and died on 14 September 1860.
Works
Jones as a poet was influenced by Percy Shelley and Thomas Carlyle, and wrote in an exaggerated style. Studies of Sensation and Event was a critical failure, though not with Bryan Waller Procter and Richard Hengist Horne. Three late poems, "To the Snow", "To Death" and "When the World is Burning", attracted attention.Jones also wrote a short book entitled The Land Monopoly: The Suffering and Demoralization Caused by It; and the Justice and Expediency of its Abolition, published in 1849.