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F.N.C. Mundy

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F.N.C

Francis Noel Clarke Mundy (1739-1815). Portrait by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), circa 1762. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Francis Noel Clarke Mundy (1739-1815) was an English poet and landowner.

Life[]

Family, youth, education[]

Mundy was descended from an old Derbyhire family. His ancestor was a Lord Mayor of London during the reign of King Henry VIII. His mother was a sister of Sir Robert Burdet, of Formark.[1]

Mundy was educated at Winchester College, where he studied under Joseph Warton. In 1757 he entered New College, Oxford, where he earned a B.A. in 1761.[2]

Adult life[]

After Oxford Mundy lived on his estate at Markeaton, Derbyshire, and was a member of the Litchfield poets.[2]

He married Sir Robert Burdet's daughter, his 1st cousin,[1] Elizabeth, who bore him 2 sons, Francis and Charles Godfrey. His 2nd wife died in 1807 aged 64.[3]

Writing[]

Mundy's debut volume of Poems is said to have been savaged by reviewers, leading him to vow to never publish his work again.[1] Accordingly, he had only a few copies of his master work, Needwood Forest, printed for friends, though some, such as poet Anna Seward, begged him to publish it.[2] When a Litchfield printer published an unauthorized version of Needwood Forest in 1776, Mundy bought up all the copies.[4]

Anna Seward regarded Needwood Forest as "one of the most beautiful local poems" and "the first entirely local poem in our language"[5] and persistedly promoted Mundy's poetry, writing verses in praise of it.[6] However she also claimed that large portions of Needwood Forest were actually written by herself and by Erasmus Darwin.[7]

Needwood Forest was well regarded in its time, and is an example of the provincial verse that was starting to become a feature of late 18th-century English literature. The poem, which is in 5 parts, is written in octosyllabic couplets and contains allusions to Milton, Spenser, Denham and Pope.[8] It was printed privately (500 copies as presents to his friends) and is appended with a number of commendatory verses by fellow Lichfield poets Sir Brooke Boothby, Erasmus Darwin and Anna Seward (attributed only by their initials). The Fall of Needwood also contains 3 shorter poems. There also existed an edition containing both poems, with different pagination to the original volumes.[9][10] The appended poems also differ. Following the grand climacteric there are 2 commendatory poems, by Seward and by Hayley.

Recognition[]

After Mundy died in 1815, the magistrates of Derbyshire commissioned a bust by Francis Chantrey which was placed in the county hall in memory of his long and eminent services as justice of the peace and chairman of the quarter sessions.[11]

There is an engraving of him with his grandson, William Mundy, by Charles Turner (after R.R. Reinagle). The picture also features in the foreground of the manuscript of Mundy's Fall of Needwood Forest. As well, South Derbyshire magistrates court own an oil painting of him "after" Thomas Lawrence.[12]

In 1851, William Mundy paid for a memorial window to his grandfather to be installed in Markeaton church.

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • Poems. Oxford, UK: W. Jackson, for D. Prince / T. Beckett & P.A. de Hondt, London, 1768.
  • Needwood Forest. Lichfield, UK: printed by John Jackson, 1776; Derby, UK: printed at the Office of J. Drewry, 1811.
  • The Fall of Needwood: My grand climacteric. Derby, UK: printed at the Office of J. Drewry, 1808.
  • Needwood Forest, and The fall of Needwood; with other poems. Derby, UK: T. Richardson, 1830.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[13]

See also[]

References[]

Mundy and Seward[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 A.Z., "F.N.C. Mundy," Gentleman's Magazine 86 (April 1816) 293. English Poetry, 1579-1830, Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. Web, Aug. 26, 2016.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Francis Noel Clarke Mundy(1739-1815), English Poetry, 1579-1830, Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. Web, Aug. 26, 2016.
  3. ↑ Bigsby 1854, Francis Noel Clarke Mundy, 276–282..
  4. ↑ John Nchols, Gentleman's Magazine 86 (July 1816) 8. English Poetry, 1579-1830, Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. Web, Aug. 26, 2016.
  5. ↑ deLucia 2013.
  6. ↑ Bowerbank 2004, Anna Seward as environmental writer p. 177.
  7. ↑ Barnard 2013, 'A free agent' p. 110.
  8. ↑ Radcliffe 2015, Needwood Forest 1776.
  9. ↑ Parkin 1875.
  10. ↑ Mundy 1776a.
  11. ↑ Burke 1835, Francis Noel Clarke Mundy p. 26.
  12. ↑ BBC 2015.
  13. ↑ Search results = au:Francis Noel Clark Mundy, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Oct. 19, 2020.

External links[]

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