Henry Lemoine (writer)

From a Huguenot background, he was born in Spitalfields 14 January 1756, and baptised in the French church De La Patente in Brown's Lane there, 1 February 1756.

He was the only son of Henry Lemoine who had left Normandy for Jersey, who died in April 1760; his mother, Anne I. Cenette, was a native of Guernsey.

He was educated at a free school run French Calvinists in the East End of London, and in 1770 was apprenticed to a stationer and rag merchant in Lamb Street, Spitalfields.

He then became for a time French master in a boarding-school at Vauxhall, kept by one Mannypenny, a post lost by the hoax that he was incapable of speaking a word of English.

In 1793 he started the Wonderful Magazine and Marvellous Chronicle, to which he contributed biographies including one of Baron Diego Pereira d'Aguilar.

Towards the end of his life he lived in the house of a Mr. Broom in Drury Lane, but he was still active with his pen, and started the Eccentric Magazine, before the conclusion of the first volume of which he died on 30 April 1812 in St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

[1] While with Chatterton, Lemoine wrote for an amateur dramatic club two satirical pieces in the manner of Charles Churchill, The Stinging Nettle and The Reward of Merit.

[1] In 1786 Lemoine published anonymously The Kentish Curate, or the History of Lamuel Lyttleton, an improper narrative romance in four volume.