Introduction

Biography

Bryan was the fa­ther of Ade­laide Proc­ter.

He was edu­cat­ed at Har­row School, where his con­tem­po­rar­ies in­clud­ed Lord By­ron and Ro­bert Peel.

On leav­ing school, he worked in the of­fice of Mr. Ath­er­ton, a so­li­ci­tor in Calne, Wilt­shire, stay­ing there un­til about 1807, when he re­turned to London to stu­dy law.

Upon his fa­ther’s death in 1816, he in­her­it­ed a small pro­per­ty, and soon af­ter be­came part­ner with a so­li­ci­tor. In 1820, the part­ner­ship dis­solved, and he be­gan to write un­der the pseu­do­nym of Bar­ry Corn­wall.

After his mar­riage in 1824 to Anne Skep­per, daugh­ter of Mrs. Ba­sil Mon­ta­gue, Proc­ter re­turned to his pro­fess­ion as a con­vey­anc­er, and was called to the bar in 1831.

The next year, he was ap­point­ed me­tro­po­li­tan com­mis­sion­er of lu­na­cy—an ap­point­ment an­nu­al­ly re­newed un­til his elec­tion as one of the Com­mis­sion­ers in Lu­na­cy (con­sti­tut­ed by the 1845 Lu­na­cy Act); he re­signed in 1861.

Procter wrote most of his verse between 1815, when he be­gan con­trib­ut­ing to the Li­ter­ary Ga­zette, and 1823, or at lat­est 1832.

Works

• Dramatic Scenes and Oth­er Po­ems, 1819
• A Si­cil­ian Sto­ry, 1820
• Marcian Co­lon­na, 1820
• Mirandola, 1821
• The Flood of Thes­sa­ly, 1823
• Effigies Po­et­ica, 1824
• English Songs, 1832
• Life of Ed­mund Kean, 1835
• Essays and Tales in Prose, 1851
• Charles Lamb: A Mem­oir, 1866