Author: John Isabell
Author: John Isabell (1851–1921)
Biography: John Isabell was born in 1851 in St. Mawes, Cornwall, the son of mason John Isabell. He was ordained as a "literate" (i.e., without college degree) and served as curate in Bodmin and Padstow before being named rector of Sennen (1886–1892). At the latter remote place, located at Land's End, he boarded with the local fisherfolk. In 1882, he married Mary Hockin Courtenay, a teacher of music and the daughter of a Truro grocer. By the mid-1890s, Isabell gave up his clerical duties and dedicated himself to entomology and journalism. In addition to a pamphlet Eight Cornish Temperence Tales in the Cornish Dialect (1883), he wrote the single novel By the Cornish Sea (1885). He and his wife continued to live in Sennen and he died there on 18 November 1921. A true Cornishman through and through.
Author Tags:
References: British Census (1881, 1901, 1911); Cornishman (23 November 1921); Probate
Fiction Titles:
- By the Cornish Sea. 2 vol. London: Sampson Low, 1885.