Augustus Jessopp
| Augustus Jessopp | |
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| Born | Augustus Jessopp 20 December 1823 Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, England |
| Died | 12 February 1914 (aged 90) Scarning, Norfolk, England |
| Resting place | Scarning, Norfolk, England |
| Occupation | Writer; clergyman |
| Nationality | British |
| Ethnicity | English |
| Notable works | Random Roaming, The Coming of the Friars, Arcady for Better or Worse, The Trials of a Country Parson, An Antiquary's Ghost Story |
Augustus Jessopp (20 December 1823 – 12 February 1914) was an English cleric and writer. He spent periods of time as a schoolmaster and then later as a clergyman in Norfolk, England. He wrote regular articles for The Nineteenth Century, variously on humorous, polemical and historical topics. He published scholarly work on local Norfolk history and on aspects of English literature. A good friend of M. R. James he is described by James' biographer R. W. Pfaff as "a fine specimen of the learned but somewhat eccentric country parson."
Born in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, on 20 December 1823, the son of John Sympson Jessopp (c. 1780–1851), Barrister-at-Law, and Eliza Bridger Goodrich, he was educated at St. John's, Cambridge (B.A. 1848 and M.A. 1851). He took orders in 1848, the same year he married Mary Anne Margaret Cotesworth.
He left with an ordinary degree to undertake the curacy of Papworth, Cambridgeshire, where he resided till 1854, when he became headmaster of Helston Grammar School. Here he remained until 1859, when he succeeded Dr. Vincent at Norwich School, being thus brought into relations with East Anglia, the region he came to write about. His tenure at Norwich (where George Meredith's elder son was among his pupils) was uneventful, and from the fact that he seldom, if ever, alludes to schoolmastering in his subsequent writing, it may not have been to his taste. He began work on his historic studies while at Norwich, and became rector of Scarning in 1879. During this period he was awarded a Bachelor and Doctor of Divinity (1870), from Worcester College, Oxford.
The Nineteenth Century was under the direction of James Knowles, and Jessopp's success may be due to this circumstance. His work certainly was what the editor wanted, and he wrote well, in a forcible, colloquial style, with earnestness, full of knowledge of his subjects, and helped by boisterous illustrations. Joseph Arch loomed large in the public eye; people wanted to hear what a county parson had to say about the agricultural labourer. He was firmly convinced that things were not going well in the rural parishes, and he was righteously indignant at the condition of the labourer's cottage, and the growing tendency to deprive him of all chance of rising to a higher level, an evil aggravated by the abolition of small farms. He realised also, the dullness of village life, the grinding monotony, and the impossibility of escape, though perhaps he was too prone to assume that these burdens would be as heavy to his neighbours as to himself.
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