Benjamin Farjeon
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Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (12 May 1838 – 23 July 1903) was an English playwright, printer, journalist, and author, known for his huge output.
Farjeon was born in London to Dinah Levy and Jacob Farjeon, Orthodox Jews. He was raised in Whitechapel and had no formal secular education. At fourteen, he entered the office of the Nonconformist, a Christian journal to learn the printing trade. He broke away from the strict faith of his father and in 1854 emigrated to Australia. During the voyage he was moved from steerage to cabin class because he had produced some numbers of a ship newspaper, the Ocean Record.
Farjeon worked as a gold miner in Victoria (Australia), started a newspaper, then went to New Zealand in 1861. He settled at Dunedin, working as a journalist on the Otago Daily Times, edited by Julius Vogel. Farjeon became manager and sub-editor. He began writing novels and plays. He attracted the attention of Charles Dickens. In 1868 he returned to England and lived in the Adelphi Theatre. Over the next thirty-five years he produced nearly sixty novels.
He was the father of J. Jefferson Farjeon, Eleanor Farjeon, Herbert Farjeon, and Harry Farjeon and the husband of Margaret Jane "Maggie" Jefferson, whom he married on 6 June 1877. Many of his works were illustrated by his long-time friend Nicholas Chevalier.
Farjeon died in Hampstead on 23 July 1903, aged 65.
[edit] Selected Bibliography
- Shadows on the Snow (1865)
- Grif: a Story of Australian Life (1866)
- Jessie Trim (1870)
- Blade-o'-Grass (1871)
- Joshua Marvel (1871)
- The Duchess of Rosemary Lane (1876)
- At the Sign of the Silver Flagon (1880)
- Great Porter Square: A Mystery (1884)
- The Mystery of M. Felix (1890)
- The Last Tenant (1893)
[edit] References
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 112.
- Serle, Percival (1949). "Farjeon, Benjamin". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
Additional sources listed by the Dictionary of Australian Biography:
- Eleanor Farjeon, A Nursery in the Nineties, which gives a charming account of Farjeon's happy married life; E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature; The Times, 24 July 1903; Who's Who, 1943; Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
