Thomas Wade was an English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

 and dramatist.

Wade a.k.a Wade Lavender by his early readers was born at Woodbridge, Suffolk

Woodbridge, Suffolk

Woodbridge is a town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. It is in the East of England, not far from the coast. It lies along the River Deben, with a population of about 7,480. The town is served by Woodbridge railway station on the Ipswich-Lowestoft East Suffolk Line. Woodbridge is twinned with...

. He early went to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where he began to publish verse of considerable merit under the inspiration of Byron, Keats

John Keats

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...

 and especially 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...

. He wrote some plays that were produced on the London stage with a certain measure of success, owing more perhaps to the acting of Charles

Charles Kemble

Charles Kemble was a British actor.-Life:The youngest son of Roger Kemble, and younger brother of John Philip Kemble, Stephen Kemble and Sarah Siddons, he was born at Brecon, South Wales. Like John Philip, he was educated at Douai...

 and Fanny Kemble

Fanny Kemble

Frances Anne Kemble , was a famous British actress and author in the early and mid nineteenth century.-Youth and acting career:...

 than to the merits of the dramatist.

Wade frequently contributed verses to the magazines, and for some years he was editor as well as part-proprietor of Bell's Weekly Messenger

Bell's Weekly Messenger

Bell's Weekly Messenger was a British Sunday newspaper that began publication on 1 May 1786, under proprietorship of John Bell. Initially a Sunday paper, from 1799 the London edition was reprinted on Monday for nationwide distribution. By 1803, it was selling 6,000 copies a week, at sixpence a copy...

. This venture proving financially unsuccessful, he retired to Jersey

Jersey

Jersey, officially the Bailiwick of Jersey is a British Crown Dependency off the coast of Normandy, France. As well as the island of Jersey itself, the bailiwick includes two groups of small islands that are no longer permanently inhabited, the Minquiers and Écréhous, and the Pierres de Lecq and...

, where he edited the British Press, continuing to publish poetry from time to time until 1871. He died in Jersey on 19 September 1875. His wife was Lucy Eager, a musician of some repute.

The most notable of Wade's publications were:

• Tasso and the Sisters (1825), a volume of poems, among which "The Nuptials of Juno" in particular showed rare gifts of imagination, though like all Wade's work deficient in sense of melody and feeling for artistic form
• Woman's Love (1828), a play produced at Covent Garden
  Covent Garden
  Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
  
  
• The Phrenologists, a farce
  Farce
  In theatre, a farce is a comedy which aims at entertaining the audience by means of unlikely, extravagant, and improbable situations, disguise and mistaken identity, verbal humour of varying degrees of sophistication, which may include word play, and a fast-paced plot whose speed usually increases,...
  
   produced at Covent Garden in 1830
• The Jew of Arragon, a play that was "howled from the stage" at Covent Garden in 1830 owing to its exaltation of the Jew
• Mundi et cordis carmina (1835), a volume of poems, many of which had previously appeared in the Monthly Repository
  Monthly Repository
  The Monthly Repository was a British monthly Unitarian periodical which ran between 1806 and 1838.The Monthly Repository was established when Robert Aspland bought William Vidler's Universal Theological Magazine and changed the name to the Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature...
  
  , The Contention of Death and Love, Helena and The Shadow Seeker--these three being published in the form of pamphlets in 1837
• Prothanasia and other Poems (1839)

Wade also wrote a drama entitled King Henry II, and a translation of Dante

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...

's "Inferno" in the metre of the original, both of which remain in manuscript; and a series of sonnets inspired by his wife, some of which have been published.

External links

Attribution