Richard Alfred Davenport

Richard Alfred Davenport (1777–1852) was an English miscellaneous writer.

Life Davenport was born in Lambeth on 18 January 1777, and started work as a writer in London at an early age. In the late 1790s he knew John Britton and Peter Lionel Courtier through a debating society, the "School of Eloquence".

Davenport wrote large portions of the history, biography, geography, and criticism in Rivington's Annual Register for several years (1792 to 1797, according to John Britton). Later he did much work for Thomas Tegg.

Works Biography Besides his work for the Chiswick Press Poets, Davenport compiled A Dictionary of Biography (1831), and produced an edition of Matthew Pilkington's General Dictionary of Painters (1852).

Editorial roles included the works of William Robertson the historian, with life, 1824; William Mitford's History of Greece, with continuation to the death of Alexander, 1835; and some works like William Guthrie's Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar, and William Enfield's Speaker. Elizabeth Gaskell encountered Selina Davenport in Knutsford around 1850.