Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Working-class poet, editor, novelist, playwright, and publisher. Born in Barnstaple, Devon. Self-educated. By the 1830s he worked as a publisher in Lincoln, and lived with his sister, and by 1838 he had moved to London and married Katherine Nettleship. Friends with Charles Knight, who commissioned from him articles on Chaucer for the Penny Magazine, as well as other publications. Saunders was also friends with William Howitt, and together they published Portraits and Memoirs of Eminent Living Political Reformers (1840). Author, with his sister, Mary Saunders, of Songs for the Many, by Two of the People (1834; re-issued as Songs, Sonnets, and Miscellaneous Poems in 1838) and Songs, Sonnets, and Miscellaneous Poems (1838). Saunders also wrote a play in blank verse, Love’s Martyrdom (produced 1855), and many novels. Founder and editor of the People’s Journal (from 1846). After falling out with Howitt, when his weekly amalgamated with Howitt’s Journal in 1849, Saunders worked as a clerk in a brewery. Founded and edited National Magazine from 1856. Declared bankrupt in 1838 and 1848. Refused a civil list pension in 1883 and 1894. Biographical information: ODNB. (AC)