Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Love, David
LOVE, DAVID (1750–1827), pedlar-poet, born at Torriburn, near Edinburgh, on 17 Nov. 1750 (Sutton, Nottingham Date-Book, p. 18), was abandoned by his father at an early age, and commenced life as a beggar in the company of his blind mother. His ambition was to become a flying stationer, but a brother's influence induced him to turn miner, and he worked for about two years in Lord Dundonald's coal-pits at Culross. An accident led to his discharge in 1778, and he hawked tracts and other wares about the border, until, having accumulated 3l., he wedded a lady named Thomson. Shortly afterwards he made his first poetical essay in some verses on 'The Pride and Vanity of Young Women,' and about 1790 enlisted in the Duke of Buccleuch's 'South Fencibles.' His account of his doings while in the regiment proves a great laxity of discipline. Obtaining his discharge in 1793 he resumed his trade of walking stationer, and made a fine harvest at Portsmouth and Gosport out of the sailors just returned from Lord Howe's victory of 1 June 1794. Becoming more prolific as a writer, he relinquished his pedlar's license, and hawked no literary wares but his own. In April 1796 he describes his 'conversion' at Newbury in Berkshire. Henceforth, with occasional intervals, during which he kept a bookseller's shop, sold quack medicines, or was locked up by the authorities for his nomadic practices, Love continued to make a livelihood by his rhymes, doing a large business in acrostics and hymns, which he sold for one halfpenny each. He finally settled at Nottingham, where most of his patrons lived, and whence most of his books were issued. There he died on 12 June 1827; his third wife, who had married him, as she said, for his scholarship, and whose ' silk wheel' had in part supported him for some time previous to his death, was eighty-three years old at the time of her death in 1853.
Besides numerous single sheets and chapbooks, including 'A New and Correct Set of Godly Poems,' 1782, 12mo, and 'David Love's Journey to London and his Return to Nottingham,' 1800 (?), 8vo, he wrote the 'Life, Adventures, and Experience of David Love,' which passed through numerous editions (3rd edit. 1823; 5th edit. 1824), and contains an engraved portrait, which in some copies is carefully coloured. While at London, where he says he found 'more kindness, love, and tenderness than any place in England,' Love mentions selling, among other verses, 'An Elegy on a Cat,' a piece on Bartholomew fair, and a rhyme on the cries of London.
[Love's Autobiography; Hone's Every-day Book, ii. 226-9, and Table Book, cols. 177-8l; Wylie's Old and New Nottingham, p. 252; Notes and Queries, 7th ser. viii. 234, 333, 411, 474.]