Background
Charles Cowden Clarke was born in Caroline County, Virginia, on December 15, 1787.
Charles Cowden Clarke was born in Caroline County, Virginia, on December 15, 1787.
Cowden Clarke published many useful books, and edited the text for John Nichol's edition of the British poets. His most important work consisted of lectures delivered between 1834 and 1856 on Shakespeare and other literary subjects. Some of the more notable series were published, among them being Shakespeare's Characters, chiefly those subordinate (1863), and Molière's Characters (1865). In 1859 he published a volume of original poems, Carmina Minima.
In 1832, the cricketer John Nyren began a collaboration with Clarke, who recorded Nyren's reminiscences of the Hambledon era and published them serially in a periodical called The Town. The following year, the series of articles appeared as The Cricketers of My Time as part of an instructional book entitled The Young Cricketer's Tutor. It became a major source for the history and personalities of Georgian cricket and also came to be regarded as the first classic in cricket's now rich literary history.
They collaborated in The Shakespeare Key, unlocking the Treasures of his Style . .. (1879), and in an edition of Shakespeare for Messrs Cassell, which was issued in weekly parts, and completed in 1868. It was reissued in 1886 as Cassell's Illustrated Shakespeare.
Charles Clarke died on the 13th of March 1877 at Genoa, and his wife survived him until the 12th of January 1898. After his death they lived at Genoa at the "Villa Novello. "
Charles Cowden Clarke was married to Mary Victoria.