John Doran (writer)

John Doran (11 March 1807 – 25 January 1878) was an English editor and miscellaneous writer of Irish parentage, wrote a number of works dealing with the lighter phases of manners, antiquities, and social history, often bearing punning titles, e.g., Table Traits with Something on Them (1854), and Knights and their Days.

His knowledge of French earned for him in the early part of 1823 an appointment as tutor to the eldest son of James Murray, 1st Baron Glenlyon.

[1] After giving up his last tutorship, Doran travelled on the continent for two or three years, and took a doctor's degree in the faculty of philosophy at the University of Marburg in Prussia.

[1] At the age of seventeen Doran wrote a melodrama Justice, or the Venetian Jew, which was on 8 April 1824 produced at the Surrey Theatre.

Before leaving England Doran had begun writing on the London Literary Chronicle (absorbed in the Athenæum in 1828), and during his time abroad he became a regular contributor.

[1] Doran began in 1830 to supply the Bath Journal with lyrical translations from the French, German, Latin, and Italian, two of his favourite authors being Béranger and Catullus.

In 1860 Doran published his most elaborate work, Their Majesties' Servants, a history of the English stage, of which a new edition was issued in 1887, revised by Robert W. Lowe.

In the same year he edited Henry Tuckerman's The Collector, a series of essays on books, newspapers, pictures, inns, authors, doctors, holidays, actors, and preachers.

His final publication was produced as a serial contribution to Temple Bar, and published posthumously in 1885 as In and about Drury Lane, a kind of appendix to Their Majesties' Servants.

[1] On 3 July 1834 he married at Reading Emma, the daughter of Captain Gilbert, R.N., and settled down for a time in Hay-a-Park Cottage, at Knaresborough.

He left an only son, Alban Doran, F.R.C.S., and an only daughter, Florence, married to Andreas Holtz of Twyford Abbey, near Ealing.