View source for Ebenezer Jones

{{Short description|British poet (1820–1860)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name          = Ebenezer Jones
| image         = <!-- filename only, no "File:" or "Image:" prefix, and no enclosing [[brackets]] -->
| alt           = <!-- descriptive text for use by speech synthesis (text-to-speech) software -->
| caption       = 
| birth_name    = <!-- only use if different from name -->
| birth_date    = {{birth date|1820|01|20}}
| birth_place   = [[Islington]], London, England
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|1860|9|14|1820|1|20|df=y}}
| death_place   = 
| other_names   = 
| occupation    = Poet
| years_active  = 
| known_for     = 
| notable_works = 
}}
'''Ebenezer Jones''' (20 January 1820 – 14 September 1860) was an English poet who wrote a good deal of [[poetry]] of very unequal merit, but at his best shows a true poetic vein. He was befriended by [[Robert Browning]] and [[Christina Rossetti]].

==Life==
He was born in Canonbury Square, [[Islington]], London, on 20 January 1820. His father was of Welsh background; his mother, Hannah Sumner, was of an Essex family. They were strict Calvinists. His father died, and at the age of 17 he worked as a clerk in a city firm connected with the tea-trade.<ref name="DNB">{{cite DNB|wstitle=Jones, Ebenezer|volume=30}}</ref>

Jones was for a short time a follower of [[Robert Owen]]. He assisted his friend [[W. J. Linton]] with political journalism, and worked for the radical publishers [[John Cleave]] and [[Henry Hetherington]]. Jones went down with [[tuberculosis|consumption]], and died on 14 September 1860.<ref name="DNB"/>

==Works==
Jones as a poet was influenced by [[Percy Shelley]] and [[Thomas Carlyle]], and wrote in an exaggerated style. ''Studies of Sensation and Event''<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jones |url=https://archive.org/details/studiessensatio00jonegoog |first=Ebenezer |title=Studies of Sensation and Event |publisher=Charles Fox |year=1843 |location=England}}</ref> (1843) was a critical failure, though not with [[Bryan Waller Procter]] and [[Richard Hengist Horne]]. Three late poems, "To the Snow", "To Death" and "When the World is Burning", attracted attention.<ref name="DNB"/>

Jones also wrote a short book entitled ''The Land Monopoly: The Suffering and Demoralization Caused by It; and the Justice and Expediency of its Abolition'', published in 1849.

===Posthumous reputation===
For a while Jones was forgotten. In 1870, however, [[Dante Rossetti]] wrote in ''[[Notes and Queries]]'' commented that he would some day be disinterred. [[William Bell Scott]] agreed, and in 1878 [[Richard Herne Shepherd]] wrote a brief account of Ebenezer Jones. There were biographical papers in the ''[[Athenaeum (British magazine)|Athenæum]]'' of September and October 1878, by [[Theodore Watts]]; and in 1879 Shepherd published a nearly complete edition of ''Studies of Sensation and Event'' (with author's corrections), additional pieces, a memoir by Ebenezer's brother Sumner, and reminiscences by Linton. A proposed second volume, containing prose writings and additional poems, preserved by his friend Horace Harral (1817&ndash;1905), never appeared.<ref name="DNB"/>

==Family==
Jones married Caroline Atherstone, niece of [[Edwin Atherstone]], but they separated.<ref name="DNB"/>

==References==
{{Reflist}}
{{wikisource|works=or}}
;Attribution
{{A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature}}
{{DNB|wstitle=Jones, Ebenezer|volume=30}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, Ebenezer}}
[[Category:1820 births]]
[[Category:1860 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:19th-century English poets]]
[[Category:English male poets]]


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