John George Edgar (1834–1864), was an English miscellaneous writer. Many of his books were intended for boys.

Life

Edgar, the fourth son of the Rev. John Edgar of Hutton,

Berwickshire Berwickshire ( gd, Siorrachd Bhearaig) is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area in south-eastern Scotland, on the English border. Berwickshire County Council existed from 1890 until 1975, when the area became part of t ...

, was born in 1834. He entered a house of business at

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

and visited the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greate ...

on mercantile affairs, but soon deserted commerce and devoted himself to literature.

Works

Edgar's earliest publication was the ''Boyhood of Great Men'' in 1853, which he followed up in the same year with a companion volume entitled ''Footprints of Famous Men''. In the course of the next ten years he wrote as many as fifteen other volumes intended for the reading of boys. Some of these were biographical, and the remainder took the form of narrative fiction based on historical facts illustrative of different periods of

English history England became inhabited more than 800,000 years ago, as the discovery of stone tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk have indicated.; "Earliest footprints outside Africa discovered in Norfolk" (2014). BBC News. Retrieved 7 February ...

. Edgar was especially familiar with early English and Scottish history, and possessed a wide knowledge of border tradition. He became the first editor of ''Every Boy's Magazine''. In the intervals of his other work Edgar found time to contribute political articles, written from a strongly conservative point of view, to the London press.

Early death

Under his close and continuous application to work his health broke down, and he died of congestion of the brain after a short illness on 22 April 1864.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Edgar, John George 1834 births 1864 deaths 19th-century English writers English merchants 19th-century English male writers 19th-century English businesspeople