Regency Personalities Series-George Soane

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

George Soane
1790–12 July 1860

George Soane

George Soane was the younger son of John Soane, he was born in London. He graduated B.A. from Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1811. Shortly afterwards he married Agnes Boaden, against his parents’ wishes. His writing career was not enough to earn a living. Soane fell into debt, and was imprisoned. In 1814 he was editing the Theatrical Inquisitor, but also served time for fraud. He gave evidence on the King’s Bench Prison, from his experience of it, to a committee of enquiry in 1815.

In The Champion during September 1815 Soane attacked his father’s reputation as an architect, in two anonymous articles. His mother died shortly afterwards. These pieces led to a family rupture, and indirectly to the foundation of Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane attempted to block the private Act of Parliament of 1833 that set up the museum’s endowment. The matter was debated in the House of Commons for an hour, with William Cobbett putting Soane’s side of the argument, that he would be deprived of a rightful inheritance. Joseph Hume spoke in favour of the act, which was passed.

Soane died on 12 July 1860.

Soane became known as an author of melodramas.

• The Bohemian: a Tragedy, London, 1817.
• The Falls of Clyde: a Melodrama, London, 1817.
• The Inn-Keeper’s Daughter, Drury Lane, 1817.
• Self-Sacrifice: a Melodrama, London, 1819.
• The Dwarf of Naples: a Tragi-comedy, London, 1819.
• The Hebrew: a Drama, London, 1820.
• Pride shall have a Fall: a Comedy, London, 1824.
• Faustus, or the Demon of Drachenfels, London, 1825.
• Aladdin: a Fairy Opera, London, 1826.
• The Night Dancers: an Opera, London, 1846.
• The Island of Calypso: an Operatic Masque, London, 1850.

Soane’s other works included:

• Knight Damon and a Robber Chief, London, 1812.
• The Eve of St. Marco: a Novel, London, 1813.
• The Peasant of Lucerne, London, 1815.
• Specimens of German Romance, London, 1826.
• The Frolics of Puck, London, 1834.
• Life of the Duke of Wellington, London, 1839–40.
• The Last Ball and other Tales, Woking, 1843.
• January Eve: a Tale, London, 1847.
• New Curiosities of Literature, London, 1847.

Soane also made translations from French, German, and Italian. He translated Undine into English in 1818, and there was a stage version by 1821. He supplied letterpress in 1820, translating some extracts of Goethe’s German, when the illustrations by Moritz Retzsch to Faust I were published in London (plates copied by Henry Moses).

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