Background
He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, on 23 October 1773 the son of George Jeffrey, a clerk in the Court of Session.
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(Excerpt from Life of Lord Jeffrey: With a Selection From ...)
Excerpt from Life of Lord Jeffrey: With a Selection From His Correspondence These letters will probably be deemed the only valuable part of this work. It must, there fore, be explained, that he was so constant a correspondent, that those now published are but. A small portion of what he was always writing; and that his letters were generally so full of those personal and domestic details, which. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, on 23 October 1773 the son of George Jeffrey, a clerk in the Court of Session.
He was educated in the Edinburgh high school, the University of Glasgow, and Oxford.
In 1794, after studying law in Edinburgh, he was admitted to the Scottish bar. Jeffrey early evidenced an interest in literary criticism and developed the habit of making notes of lectures, essays, and translations, thus accustoming himself to laying hold on the essential elements of whatever he was considering.
Jeffrey was called to the Scottish bar in 1794, but unable to attract work because of his switch of allegiance from his father's high Toryism to Whiggism, turned to literature and edited the newly founded Edinburgh Review for 27 years. He helped to found the Edinburgh Review in 1802 and after the first two numbers was appointed its editor, a position he retained until 1829. He occasioned Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers in 1809, in which he was satirized.
In 1829 Jeffrey was elected dean of the faculty of advocates and gave up his editorship.
Though a Whig in politics, Jeffrey was a conservative in criticism and unable to understand or evaluate justly the work of such innovators as Wordsworth and Coleridge.
His review of The Excursion, which begins with the sentence, "This will never do, " is famous among literary attacks.
The mystical element in these men and the strong feeling and exuberant fancy of Shelley and Keats were lost upon him, but he approved lesser figures associated with the Romantic Movement, notably Thomas Campbell and Samuel Rogers.
Jeffrey's fame as a critic, once very great, has declined. Jeffrey's editorship lasted about twenty-six years, ceasing with the ninety-eighth number, published in June 1829, when he resigned in favour of Macvey Napier. On the return of the Whigs to power in 1830 he became Lord Advocate, and entered parliament at a by-election in January 1831 as member for the Perth burghs. The election was overturned on petition, and in March he was returned at a by-election for Malton, a borough in the interest of Lord Fitzwilliam. He was re-elected in Malton at the general election in May 1831, but was also returned for the Perth burghs and chose to sit for the latter. After the passing of the Scottish Reform Bill, which he introduced in parliament, he was returned for Edinburgh in December 1832. At this time he was living at 24 Moray Place in the west end of Edinburgh. His parliamentary career, which, though not brilliantly successful, had won him high general esteem, was terminated by his elevation to the judicial bench as Lord Jeffrey in May 1834. In 1842 he was moved to the first division of the Court of Session. On the disruption of the Scottish Church he took the side of the seceders, giving a judicial opinion in their favour, afterwards reversed by the House of Lords.
(Excerpt from Life of Lord Jeffrey: With a Selection From ...)
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He was admitted to the Scottish bar in December 1794, but, having abandoned the Tory principles in which he had been educated, he found that his Whig politics hampered his legal prospects.
He became a member of the Speculative Society, where he measured himself in debate with Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Francis Horner, the Marquess of Lansdowne, Lord Kinnaird and others.
His marriage to Catherine Wilson in 1801 made the question of a settled income even more pressing. Jeffrey's wife had died in 1805, and in 1810 he became acquainted with Charlotte, daughter of Charles Wilkes of New York, and great-niece of John Wilkes. When she returned to the United States, Jeffrey followed her, and they were married in 1813. Before returning to Scotland, they visited several of the chief American cities.