Dictionary of National Biography, 1901 supplement/Curwen, Henry
CURWEN, HENRY (1845–1892), Anglo-Indian journalist and author, was descended from the Curwens of Workington Hall, a well-known family in Cumberland. He was son of Henry Curwen, rector of Workington, a younger son of Henry Curwen (1783–1860) of Workington, by Dora, daughter of General Goldie, and was born at Workington Hall in 1845. He was educated at Rossall School, and then settled for a time in London, where he worked for John Camden Hotten [q. v.], the publisher. He had a chief hand in compiling several books which bear only the publisher's name on the title-page. Among these was the ‘Golden Treasury of Thought.’ His first literary production under his own name was a volume of translations of French poetry called ‘Echoes from French Poets,’ and published by Hotten in August 1870. It contained verse translations from Alfred de Musset, Lamartine, Baudelaire, and others, which showed insight into, and appreciation of, French poetry. Edgar Allan Poe attracted him, and he translated from the French Baudelaire's 'Study of the Life and Writings of Poe' in 1872. He also contributed a very sympathetic account, of Poe's career to the 'Westminster Review,' in which he also wrote some elaborate articles on other neglected poets, viz. Henri Murger, Novalis, Petofi, Balzac, and André Chenier. These articles, which appeared between 1871 and 1873, were published collectively in two volumes in December 1874, under the title of 'Sorrow and Song; Studies of Literary Struggle.' Towards the close of 1873 Curwen published a readable account of English booksellers and publishers, under the title of 'A History of Booksellers; the New and the Old.' In 1876 there followed a volume of short stories, the first of many, called 'Within Bohemia, or Love in London.'
In 1876 Curwen left England for India, which was thenceforth his home. General Nassau Lees [q. v.], who had then recently acquired the 'Times of India,' an Anglo-Indian paper published in Bombay, selected Curwen as assistant editor, under Mr. Grattan Geary, the editor. Curwen, soon after his arrival, described in the paper a tour through the districts stricken by the great famine of 1876–7.
Though immersed in journalism, Curwen found time to continue his literary efforts. In August 1879 was published 'Plodding on; or, the Jog Trot to Fame and Fortune,' the last volume that appeared under his name. A short anonymous novel, called 'Zit and Zoe,' an imaginative description of the earliest condition of mankind from the Darwinian point of view, was reprinted from 'Blackwood's Magazine' in 1886. It was followed in 1888 by a longer story in two volumes, called 'Lady Bluebeard,' a story of modern society. Curwen's last effort in fiction appeared in 1891, under the title of 'Dr. Hermione.' It is marked by the same characteristics as the other two—slightness of plot, picturesque description of scenery, and insight into character.
Meanwhile in 1880 Curwen became chief editor of the 'Times of India.' He conducted the paper in a scrupulous spirit of fairness, and raised it to a high rank among Anglo-Indian journals. General Lees, the proprietor of the paper, who died in 1889, offered Curwen by will the first refusal of the whole concern. This Curwen accepted, and became proprietor with his manager, Mr. Charles Kane. Soon afterwards his health failed. He died on 22 Feb. 1892, on board the P. & O. steamship Ravenna, three days after leaving Bombay. He was buried at sea. A brass mural tablet was placed in St. Thomas's Cathedral, Bombay, by his friends. Curwen was unmarried.
[Personal information; obituary notices in the Indian press, privately collected and printed at the Times of India press, 1892; Calcutta Review, October 1893, article by Professor M. Macmillan (reprinted in author's Globe-Trotter in India and other Essays, 1895). The present writer's Essays on English History is dedicated to Curwen's memory.]