John Cordy Jeaffreson
John Cordy Jeaffreson was an English novelist and writer of popular non-fiction. He also spent periods teaching and as an inspector of historical documents.
Life
Jeaffreson was born at Framlingham, Suffolk, on 14 January 1831. He was the second son and ninth child of William Jeaffreson, a surgeon, and Caroline, youngest child of George Edwards, tradesman there; and was named after his mother's uncle by marriage, John Cordy of Worlingworth and Woodbridge. After education at the grammar schools of Woodbridge and Botesdale, he was apprenticed to his father in August 1845; but matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 22 June 1848, where among his undergraduate friends were the future novelists Henry Kingsley and Arthur Locker.After graduating B.A. in May 1852, Jeaffreson lived in London for about six years, working as a private tutor and lecturing in schools. He also began to write. From 1856 he was a journalist, writing from 1858 for the rest of his life for the Athenaeum. He became a student at Lincoln's Inn on 18 June 1856 and was called to the bar on 30 April 1859, but did not practise law.
Jeaffreson moved in legal as well as in literary social circles. In 1860 he joined "Our Club", a literary group that was then a dining club, meeting weekly at Clunn's Hotel, Covent Garden. In 1872 Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, a friend and deputy keeper of the Public Records, invited Jeaffreson to become an inspector of documents for the Historical Manuscripts Commission, and after palaeographical training at the Public Record Office he began work in 1874. He then concentrated on preparing reports and calendars of manuscript records.
After years of poor health, which brought his work to an end, Jeaffreson died on 2 February 1901 at his house in Maida Vale, and was buried in Paddington Old Cemetery, Willesden Lane.
Works
Jeaffreson initially wrote novels, publishing Crewe Rise in 1854 and next year Hinchbrook, which ran as a serial in Fraser's Magazine. During the next thirty years a long series of orthodox three-volume novels followed; Live it Down and Not Dead Yet were well received on publication. Novels and Novelists from Elizabeth to Victoria, compiled at the British Museum, opened up a popularising vein that became Jeaffreson's main work, leading to:- A Book about Doctors
- A Book about Lawyers
- A Book about the Clergy
- Brides and Bridals
- A Book about the Table
Jeaffreson inspected the manuscript collection of Alfred Morrison, and he obtained the owner's permission to edit unpublished correspondence of Lord Byron and Lord Nelson. In The Real Lord Byron: New Views of the Poet's Life he wrote on Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley: Abraham Hayward and J. A. Froude wrote hostile reviews. His The Real Shelley: New Views of the Poet's Life, was attacked by Edward Dowden. Jeaffreson's Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson: an historical biography appeared in 1888, and The Queen of Naples and Lord Nelson in 1889.
His other main works were:
- The Annals of Oxford, 1870
- Cutting for Partners, 3 vols. 1890
- A Book of Recollections, 2 vols. 1894
- A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century, from the Papers of Christopher Jeaffreson of Dullingham House, Cambridgeshire, 2 vols. 1898