1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Warburton, Bartholomew Elliott George

WARBURTON, BARTHOLOMEW ELLIOTT GEORGE (1810-1852), usually known as Eliot Warburton, British traveller and novelist, was born in 1810 near Tullamore, Ireland. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called to the Irish bar in 1837. He contracted lasting friendships with Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) and A. W. Kinglake, and gave up his practice as a barrister for travel and literature. He made a hit with his first book, The Crescent and the Cross. It was an account of his travels in 1843 in Turkey, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, and fairly divided public attention with Kinglake's Eothen, which appeared in the same year, 1844. Interest was centred in the East at the time, and Warburton had popular sympathy with him in his eloquent advocacy of the annexation of Egypt; but, apart from this consideration, the spirited narrative of his adventures and the picturesque sketches of Eastern life and character were more than sufficient to justify the success of the book. His most substantial work was a Memoir of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers (1849), enriched with original documents, and written with eloquent partiality for the subject. This was followed in 1850 by Reginald Hastings, a novel, the scenes of which were laid in the same period of civil war, and, in 1851, by another historical novel, Darien, or The Merchant Prince. He was sent by the Atlantic and Pacific Junction Company to explore the isthmus of Darien and to negotiate a treaty with the Indian tribes. He sailed on this mission in the "Amazon," which perished by fire with nearly all on board on the 4th of January 1852.

His brother, Major George Warburton (1816-1857), wrote Hochelaga, or England in the New World (1846), and The Conquest of Canada (1849).