Henry Kirke White

WHITE, Henry Kirke. b. Nottingham, 21 March 1785; d. Cambridge, 19 October 1806. He was destined first for the hosiery trade, and then for the law, but he showed early literary promise, publishing Clifton Grove, A Sketch in Verse, with other Poems (1803). At one time he was inclined to Deism, but his mind was changed by reading The Force of Truth: an authentic narrative (1779; many editions) by Thomas Scott, chaplain to the Lock Hospital (see ‘London hospitals and their hymns’*). He was also friendly with R.W. Almond, who later became rector of St Peter’s Nottingham, and who published Hymns for Occasional Use in the Parish Church of St Peter in Nottingham (Nottingham, 1819). Intending to...