Life

Richard, born at Chelsea early in 1842, was a younger son of Samuel Shepherd, F.S.A. His grandfather, Richard Herne Shepherd (1775–1850), was from 1818 to 1848 a well-known revivalist

Christian revival

Christian revival is a term that generally refers to a specific period of increased spiritual interest or renewal in the life of a church congregation or many churches, either regionally or globally...

preacher at the Ranelagh Chapel, Chelsea, and published, besides sermons and devotional works, a volume of meditative verse

Meditative poetry

Meditative poetry combines the religious practice of meditation with verse. It occurs in many cultures, especially in Asian, European and Hindu cultures...

 entitled Gatherings of Fifty Years (1843).

The younger Richard was educated largely at home, developed a taste for literature, and published at the age of sixteen a copy of verses entitled Annus Moriens (1858).

Works

In 1861 he issued an essay on The School of Pantagruel, in which he traced 'Pantagruelism' in England from Rochester

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester , styled Viscount Wilmot between 1652 and 1658, was an English Libertine poet, a friend of King Charles II, and the writer of much satirical and bawdy poetry. He was the toast of the Restoration court and a patron of the arts...

 to Sterne

Laurence Sterne

Laurence Sterne was an Irish novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published many sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics...

. Subsequently he edited booksellers' editions of the classics, including William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

's Poems (1868 and 1874), Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

's Poems (1871), Lamb

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb was an English essayist, best known for his Essays of Elia and for the children's book Tales from Shakespeare, which he produced with his sister, Mary Lamb . Lamb has been referred to by E.V...

's Poetry for Children (1872 and 1878), Chapman's Works (1874), Lamb's Works (1875), Ebenezer Jones's Poems (1879), Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

's Works (1884), Dickens

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...

's Speeches (1884), Dickens's Plays and Poems (1885), and Shelley's Prose Works (1888).

In 1869 he published Translations from Baudelaire (reissued 1877, 12mo); in 1873 he printed, with notes, Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

's forgotten tragedy Osorio, and in 1875 The Lover's Tale (of 1833) and other early uncollected poems of Tennyson (unearthed from albums and periodicals). Fifty copies were privately printed in 1875, but the volume was suppressed by injunction in the court of chancery.

In 1878 he published Mrs. E. Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...

's Earlier Poems without the assent of the writer's living representatives, who warmly resented his action. In the like character of literary chiffonnier, he prepared editions in the same year of the Juvenilia of Longfellow and Moore; and Sultan Stork, a volume of juvenile pieces by Thackeray, in 1887.

In 1878 there appeared an agreeable pasticcio of biographical and bibliographical gossip in his Waltoniana. Next year he obtained 150l. damages from the Athenaeum

Athenaeum (magazine)

The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....

newspaper for an injurious review of his revised edition of Lamb's Poetry for Children. In 1881 he issued a dull Memoir of Thomas Carlyle, some passages in which had to be cancelled. Meanwhile he closely studied modern bibliography

Bibliography

Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology...

, and prepared bibliographical accounts of Ruskin (1879), Dickens (1880, revised 1884), Thackeray (1881, revised 1887 and appended to Sultan Stork), Carlyle (1881), Mr. A. C. Swinburne (1883 and 1887), and Tennyson (issued posthumously in 1896, being an expansion of Tennysoniana, 1866 and 1879). He died in London on 15 July 1895. At the time of his death he was preparing a bibliography of Coleridge for Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries

Notes and Queries is a long-running quarterly scholarly journal that publishes short articles related to "English language and literature, lexicography, history, and scholarly antiquarianism". Its emphasis is on "the factual rather than the speculative"...

, to which he was a frequent contributor.

Source

• Thomas Seccombe
  Thomas Seccombe
  Thomas Seccombe was a miscellaneous English writer and, from 1891 to 1901, assistant editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, writing over 700 entries. Educated at Felsted and Balliol College, Oxford, taking a first in Modern History in 1889.-Works:*Twelve Bad Men *The Age of Johnson *The...
  
   (contrib.) "Shepherd, Richard Herne,” in Dictionary of National Biography, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., (1885-1900) in 63 vols. [verbatim]
  • citing: [Memoir of the Rev. R. H. Shepherd, by his sons, 1854 (with portrait); Shepherd's Bibliography of Tennyson, 1896 (prefatory note); Times
    The Times
    The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
    
    , 30 July 1895; Athenaeum
    Athenaeum (magazine)
    The Athenaeum was a literary magazine published in London from 1828 to 1921. It had a reputation for publishing the very best writers of the age....
    
    , 1878, 1879, 1881, and 1895 ii. 323.]