Francis William Blagdon

Francis William Blagdon (bapt. 19 January 1777 – 24 December 1818) was an English journalist and author.

Life Blagdon began his career as a newsboy for The Sun newspaper. He then became amanuensis to Dr. Anthony Florian Madinger Willich, a medical writer, who taught him French and German; he also learned Spanish and Italian.

Blagdon became associated with the Morning Post, which he helped to edit for some years. The paper was then Tory in its views, and Blagdon took a polemical line. He was imprisoned for six months in 1805, for libeling John Jervis, Earl St. Vincent as a naval administrator. The Phœnix, another of his ventures, soon came to an end. He died of consumption in Smith Square, Westminster, on Christmas Eve 1818, and was buried on 2 January 1819 at St Margaret's, Westminster. A subscription was raised for his destitute widow and children. It was reissued in 1813 as an appendix to Captain Thomas Williamson's European in India (London). In 1806 he contributed the Memoirs to Orme's Graphic History of the Life, Exploits, and Death of Lord Nelson. Subsequent editions of Blagdon's work appeared in 1817, 1837, 1848, 1863, 1871, and in 1881; and in 1892 was published a version by Theodore Alois Buckley, described as "abridged from Milner's edition".

In 1812 Blagdon contributed to Francophobia with The Situation of Great Britain in 1811, translated from the French of M. de Montgaillard (London); this evoked a reply from John Jervis White Jervis, who described Blagdon as "a gentleman well known in the walks of literary knowledge and of loyal authors". In 1814 Blagdon published An Historical Memento ... of the public Rejoicings ... in celebration of the Peace of 1814, and of the Centenary of the Accession of the House of Brunswick (London), and in 1819 a New Dictionary of Classical Quotations (London, 1819).

Blagdon was also author of:

The Grand Contest ... or a View of the Causes and Probable Consequences of the threatened Invasion of Great Britain, 1803. Remarks on a Pamphlet entitled "Observations on the Concise Statement of Facts by Sir Home Popham," 1805. Authentic Memoirs of George Morland, 1806; this contains many engravings of Morland's pictures. The Modern Geographer, 1807. Langhorne's Fables of Flora . . . with a Life of the Author, 1812. Letters of the Princess of Wales, comprising the only true History of the celebrated "Book," 1813; on Princess Caroline of Brunswick.

He contributed a life of Samuel Johnson with an edition of his poems to The Laurel (London, 1808); and compiled a general index to the British Critic, vols, xxi–xlii. To him is attributed Paris as it was, and as it is (London, 1803).