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1834-1903
Novelist who was born and lived in Birmingham. His parents were from prosperous Quaker manufacturing families. After a patchy education, partly at a local Quaker school and some with private tuition at home (due to ill-health), he became a chemist in his father's business at the age of sixteen, but showed an early interest in the church, literature and mysticism. A sensitive child he suffered from a painful stammer which prevented him from taking an active role in society and politics.
He is remembered for his historical novel John Inglesant; a Romance (1881). Shorthouse had worked on this project for ten years and had then put the manuscript to one side for a further three years before his wife, who he had married in 1857, persuaded him to have it privately printed. A hundred copies were produced and given away to his friends and he seemed satisfied. Through the auspices of the author Mrs. Humphrey Ward, however, the novel was brought to the attention of Macmillans, the publishers, and it thus reached a much wider audience and sealed the author's fame.
Although set in the time of Charles I, John Inglesant dealt with he contemporary conflicts within the church where the High Church movement was blurring the distinctions between Anglican and Catholic ritual. Lydiard, the large country house described in the opening chapter, is thought to be based on Plowden Hall near Lydbury North, Shropshire.
Over the following two years, Shorthouse produced a study of Wordsworth and an edition of George Herbert's The temple, before issuing a second, much less successful, novel The little schoolmaster Mark in 1883. He went on to write several more novels but never to matched the success of his first.
Joseph Shorthouse died in March 1903 at Edgbaston Park, Birmingham, after a long illness and was buried in Old Edgbaston Cemetery.
The following works are available in the West Midlands Creative Literature Collection:-
Blanche, Lady Falaise (1891)
The Countess Eve (1888)
John Inglesant (1881)
The little school master Mark
(1883)
Sir Percival (1886)
A teacher of the violin and other
stories (1888)
A sample chapter and the complete text of the following are available on this website.
Page created 9 February 2001 and last
updated 28 October 2002
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