John Sterling
John Sterling was a Scottish writer and literary figure born on July 20, 1806, at Kames Castle on the Isle of Bute. He was the son of Edward Sterling, a military man and a prominent staff writer for The Times, known for his powerful influence in journalism. John Sterling faced personal challenges throughout his life, including a struggle with tuberculosis and the early loss of several siblings. He attended Glasgow University and later Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became involved with the Cambridge Conversazione Society and pursued Romantic literary ideals. After leaving university without a degree, he co-founded the Metropolitan Quarterly Magazine and later took over The Athenaeum, promoting the ideas of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Sterling's life was marked by radical political views and a brief foray into plantation management in the Caribbean, which ended in hardship due to a hurricane. He married Susannah Barton in 1830, and they had six children together. After experiencing profound personal losses, including the deaths of his wife and mother, Sterling continued to write, producing works that included poems and philosophical novels under the pseudonym Archaeus. He died on September 18, 1844, due to health complications, leaving behind a legacy of literary contributions that were posthumously collected and published. Sterling's life reflects the intertwining of literary ambition and personal tragedy, capturing the complexities of a 19th-century intellectual.
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John Sterling
Writer
- Born: July 20, 1806
- Birthplace: Kames Castle, Isle of Bute, Scotland
- Died: September 18, 1844
- Place of death: Ventnor, Isle of Wight, England
Biography
John Sterling was born at Kames Castle on the Isle of Bute in Scotland on July 20, 1806. His father, Edward Sterling, had been a military man and political campaigner and went on to become a staff writer and coproprietor of The Times; writer Thomas Carlye dubbed Edward Sterling “the thunderer of The Times.” Sterling’s mother, Hester Coningham Sterling, gave birth to seven children, of which the eldest, Anthony, was by far the healthiest. Sterling’s four younger siblings died in childhood, two of them in the same week, and he suffered from tuberculosis throughout his life. His precarious existence was relentlessly peripatetic because of his father’s many relocations and his continual attempts to avoid English winters.
Sterling’s schooling was sporadic. He enrolled at Glasgow University in 1822 but transferred to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1824. He paid scant attention to his formal studies but became a leading light of the Cambridge Conversazione Society (also known as the Cambridge Apostles), affiliating himself with the followers of writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s German-derived theory of Romanticism. Sterling left Cambridge without a degree in 1827.
He and Frederick Maurice, a fellow Apostle, founded the Metropolitan Quarterly Magazine and then took over The Athenaeum, in which they promoted Coleridgean ideas. Sterling began writing the novel Arthur Coningsby but also took a keen interest in politics, adopting a stance more radical than his father’s and planning to accompany the insurrectionist José María de Torrijos y Uriarte to Spain 1830. However, Sterling got no further than the French coast before ill health drove him home.
On November 2, 1830, Sterling married Susannah Barton, the eldest daughter of Lieutenant General Charles Barton; her sister, Anna, subsequently married Frederick Maurice. When Sterling’s uncle, Walter Coningham, inherited a sugar plantation on the Caribbean island of St Vincent in 1831, Sterling thought the climate might be beneficial and became the plantation’s manager. However, the plantation was devastated by a hurricane on August 11, 1831; Susannah gave birth to their first child, Edward, on a neighboring estate.
Sterling brought his wife and child back to England in August 1832 and finished Arthur Coningsby. Julius Hare, his former tutor at Cambridge, persuaded him to take deacon’s orders in 1834 and to become his curate at Hurstmonceux. However, in February, 1835, Sterling met Carlyle, with whom he formed a close friendship, reigniting his radical and literary interests.
Sterling spent the winter of 1836-1837 in Bordeaux, France, where he wrote his finest works, publishing many of them under the pseudonym Archaeus in Blackwood’s Magazine, including the narrative poem “The Sexton’s Daughter” and a long series entitled “Legendary Lore,” which culminated in the philosophical fantasy novel The Onyx Ring. After that, his work was continually interrupted by pulmonary hemorrhages. On Good Friday, April 14, 1843, Susannah gave birth to her sixth child, Hester, and then sickened and died of puerperal fever; Sterling’s mother died on Easter Sunday. Sterling moved his children to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight shortly thereafter, where he finished his tragedy, Strafford, published in 1843. He survived the winter, but died of a final hemmorhage on September 18, 1844. Hare collected some of Sterling’s work for a book, Essays and Tales, published in 1848.