Samuel Jackson Pratt

Samuel Jackson Pratt (1749–1814) was an English writer born at St Ives in Huntingdonshire, who worked for a time as an actor before settling to authorship. He published much of his work under the pen-name Courtney Melmoth, among it the poems The Tears of Genius (1774), on the death of Goldsmith, and The Shadows of Shakespeare (c. 1780), on the death of Garrick, and sentimental novels such as The Pupil of Pleasure (1776) and Emma Corbett (1780).

His longer verse includes Sympathy (1781) and Humanity, or the Rights of Nature (1788), a poem in two books that condemns the slave trade. He later published travel writing and miscellanies. He died in Birmingham in 1814. This selection draws on the early printed editions (via ECCO-TCP) and gives only his verse; the two longer poems, Humanity and Sympathy, and Garrick’s Looking-Glass, are placed in the Works section.