George John Warren Vernon

LC name authority rec. nr00034946

LC Heading: Vernon, G. J. Warren (George John Warren), Baron, 1803-1866

Biography:

Warren [formerly Venables-Vernon], George John, fifth Baron Vernon (1803–1866), literary editor, was born George John Venables Vernon at Stapleford Hall, Nottinghamshire, on 22 June 1803. He was the only son of George Charles Venables Vernon, fourth Baron Vernon (1779–1835), of Sudbury, Derbyshire, and Frances Maria (d. 1837), only daughter of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren (1753–1822). Sir Richard Vernon, speaker of the House of Commons in 1426, was an ancestor. He was educated at Eton College and, from 1822 to 1824, at Christ Church, Oxford. As a youth he was taken to Italy, and afterwards lived in Florence, where he studied the Italian language and history. On 30 October 1824 he married Isabella Caroline (1805–1853), daughter of Cuthbert Ellison of Hebburn, Durham; they had five children.

Vernon entered public life in 1831 as MP for Derby. After the passing of the 1832 Reform Bill, which he warmly supported, the county had two divisions, and he became member for the southern part. He continued in the House of Commons until 1835, when he was called to the House of Lords on the death of his father. In 1837 he exchanged his birth name, Venables Vernon, for that of Warren, in compliance with the will of Lady Warren Bulkeley, which bequeathed the estates of Poynton and Stockport to her niece Frances Maria, Vernon's mother, in 1826. His children born before 1837, however, retained their own name.

Vernon was an expert rifle-shot, an energetic supporter of the volunteer movement, and in 1859 raised a company at Sudbury, where he erected a firing-range. His whole life, however, was devoted to Dante. With the advice and help of such friends and collaborators as Luigi Passerini, Sir Anthony Panizzi, and Pietro Fraticelli, he printed numerous texts, including L'Inferno, secondo il testo di B. Lombardi con ordine e schiarimento per uso dei forestieri di L. V. (1841); Petri Allegherii super Dantis ipsius genitoris comœdiam commentarium, edited by Vincenzio Nannucci (1845); Chiose sopra Dante, testo inedito, ora per la prima volta pubblicato (1846), commonly known as Il falso Boccaccio; Il Febusso e Breusso, poema ora per la prima volta pubblicato (1847); Chiose alla Cantica dell' Inferno di Dante Allighieri attribuite a Jacopo suo figlio (1848); and Comento alla cantica di Dante Allighieri di autore anonimo (1848), reputedly the oldest commentary on the Inferno in existence, probably written about 1328.

Vernon's two most important works, however, were Le prime quattro edizioni della ‘Divina commedia’ letteralmente ristampate (1858) and ‘L'Inferno’ di Dante Alighieri disposto in ordine grammaticale e corredato di brevi dichiarazioni da G. G. Warren, Lord Vernon (1858–65). Only a limited number of copies were issued for private circulation, as neither was intended for sale. L'Inferno was described by Henry Clark Barlow as a work ‘which, for utility of purpose, comprehensiveness of design, and costly execution, has never been equalled in any country’ (Barlow, 1). Some of the most distinguished artists and men of letters in Italy were occupied for twenty years in its preparation. It includes the text of the Inferno with a grammatical ordo and many notes and tables; the second volume is an encyclopaedia of history, geography, topography, and heraldry relating to Dante and Florence, with many unpublished documents; the third or album volume, which appeared after Lord Vernon's death, contains 112 original engravings of incidents in the Inferno, views of towns, castles, and other localities mentioned therein, and portraits, paintings, plans, and historical monuments illustrating the history of the fourteenth century.

Warren Vernon was a socio corrispondente of the Academia della Crusca from 1847 and a member of many other literary societies. His wife having died on 14 October 1853 he married, second, on 14 December 1859, his cousin Frances Maria Emma, only daughter of the Revd Brooke Boothby. Their only child, a son, died in infancy. In May 1865 Vernon was created cavaliere di San Maurizio e Lazzaro, in recognition of his labours on behalf of the national poet. The following year, after a long illness, he died at Sudbury Hall, Derbyshire, on 31 May; he was buried at Sudbury on 6 June. He had intended to print the famous Latin commentary Benvenuto da Imola delivered as public lectures at Bologna about 1375, but this was carried out by his second son, William Warren Vernon, in 1887, under the editorship of Sir J. P. Lacaita. A considerable Dante scholar in his own right, William Warren Vernon published a series of ‘Readings of the “Commedia”’ from 1888 to 1900.

Vernon's eldest son, Augustus Henry Vernon, sixth Baron Vernon (1829–1883), was born at Rome on 1 February 1829. He was lieutenant and captain in the Scots Fusilier Guards but retired in 1851. On 7 June of that year he married Harriet Frances Maria (1827–1898), third daughter of Thomas William Anson, first earl of Lichfield, who bore him four sons and six daughters. On the death of his father in 1866 he succeeded to the title. He was a president of the Royal Agricultural Society and, as chairman of the French farmers' seed fund in 1871, took an active part in the relief of the French agriculturists who had suffered during the time of war. Though not an Italian scholar he shared in the family devotion to Dante, and the third, or album, volume of his father's edition of The Inferno was issued under his care. He died at 17 Dover Street, London, on 1 May 1883, in his fifty-fifth year, and was buried at Sudbury four days later. He was succeeded by his son, George William Henry Venables Vernon, seventh Baron Vernon (1854–1898).

The Vernon family's Dantesque endeavour was the last of the great whig politico-cultural projects typical of the Regency period. The fifth baron combined an eighteenth-century collector's interest in Dante with a nineteenth-century devotion to textual and historical scholarship. He also passed on a tradition of social responsibility; the sixth baron's work to relieve French farmers imitated his father's assistance to Lancashire and Cheshire during the cotton famine of 1862.

H. R. Tedder, rev. Alison Milbank

(H. R. Tedder, ‘Warren , George John, fifth Baron Vernon (1803–1866)’, rev. Alison Milbank, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/28242, accessed 4 Jan 2016])