Martin Tupper

Martin Farquhar Tupper (17 July 1810, London – November 1889, Albury, Surrey) was an English writer, and poet, and the author of Proverbial Philosophy.

He was the eldest son of Dr. Martin Tupper (1780–1844), a medical man highly esteemed in his day who came from an old Guernsey family, by his wife Ellin Devis Marris (d. 1847), only child of Robert Marris (1749–1827), a landscape painter (by his wife Frances, daughter of the artist Arthur Devis).

Martin Tupper received his early education at the Charterhouse. In due course of time he was transferred to Christ Church, Oxford where he took his degree of B.A. in 1832, of M.A. in 1835 and of DCL in 1847. At Christ Church, as a member of the Aristotle Class, he was a fellow student of many distinguished men, the Marquess of Dalhousie, the Earl of Elgin, William Ewart Gladstone and Francis Hastings Doyle.

Having taken his degree of M.A., Tupper became a student at Lincoln's Inn and was called to the Bar in the Michaelmas Term, 1835. He did not, however ever practice as a barrister. In the same year he married his first cousin once-removed Isabella Devis, daughter of Arthur William Devis, by whom he was to have four sons and four daughters. About the same period commenced Tupper's literary career. He contributed to the periodicals of the day, but his first important essay in literature was a small volume entitled Sacra Poesis.

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