Francis William Blagdon

He then became amanuensis to Dr. Anthony Florian Madinger Willich, a medical writer, who taught him French and German; he also learned Spanish and Italian.

He was imprisoned for six months in 1805, for libeling John Jervis, Earl St. Vincent as a naval administrator.

[1] In 1809, Blagdon came into conflict with William Cobbett, and in October of that year he published a prospectus, perhaps not intended seriously, of "Blagdon's Weekly Political Register", which was to commence The History of the Political Life and Writings of Cobbett, who was compared to Catiline.

[1] As a Sunday anti-Cobbett paper, Blagdon's Register was subsidised by the government, as was a similar effort of Lewis Goldsmith.

Francis Prevost a literary miscellany, Flowers of Literature, which ran to seven volumes (London, 1803–9).

[1] It was based on a collection of aquatints by Edward Orme, after William Daniell, James Hunter, and Francis Swain Ward.

In 1806 he contributed the Memoirs to Orme's Graphic History of the Life, Exploits, and Death of Lord Nelson.

[1] The proposals of the Whig ministry of 1806 on Catholic emancipation induced Blagdon to publish an edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs; it appeared as An Universal History of Christian Martyrdom .

[1] In 1812 Blagdon contributed to Francophobia with The Situation of Great Britain in 1811, translated from the French of M. de Montgaillard (London); this evoked a reply from John Jervis White Jervis, who described Blagdon as "a gentleman well known in the walks of literary knowledge and of loyal authors".

[1] Blagdon was also author of:[1] He contributed a life of Samuel Johnson with an edition of his poems to The Laurel (London, 1808); and compiled a general index to the British Critic, vols, xxi–xlii.