Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Belfour, Hugo John
BELFOUR, HUGO JOHN (1802–1827), author of poems signed St. John Dorset, was born in or near London in 1802. He was the eldest child of Edward Belfour, of the Navy Office, by his wife Catherine, daughter of John Greenwell, of the India House (Gent. Mag. May 1801). Before the completion of his nineteenth year, Belfour produced 'The Vampire, a Tragedy in five acts, by St. John Dorset,' 8vo, London, 1st and 2nd editions, 1821. The scene is laid in Egypt. The second edition was inscribed 'To W. C. Macready, Esq.,' to whom the work had been submitted in manuscript. Belfour also wrote 'Montezuma, a Tragedy in five acts, and other Poems, by St. John Dorset,' 8vo, London, 1822. In May 1826 he was ordained, and 'appointed to a curacy in Jamaica, with the best prospects of preferment' (Gent. Mag.). He died in Jamaica in September 1827.
[The Vampire, a tragedy, 1821; Gent. Mag. May 1801, January 1816, September 1818, and December 1827; Halkett and Laing's Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous Literature of Great Britain, Edinburgh, 1882.]