Biography

James Plumptre (1771-1832), playwright and Church of England clergyman, was born in Cambridge in 1771. He was the son of Robert Plumptre (1723-1788), the president of Queens' College, and his wife, Anne Newcome. In 1788 he entered Queens' College, Cambridge, but in 1790 he migrated to Clare College, from which he graduated BA in 1792, MA in 1795, and BD in 1808. He was elected a fellow of Clare College in 1794, and was ordained in the same year. He began his writing career in the important provincial centre of Norwich and was part of the Enfield circle there; collaborating on plays and literature with his sisters and other members of the circle. He is mainly remembered for his dramatic work The Lakers: a Comic Opera (1798) but also published works on drama as moral education along with other plays. Selections from his journals made while travelling around Britain were published in 1992. He married Elizabeth Robinson (1770-1836) in 1815, two years after he came into the college living of Great Gransden, Huntingdonshire. He died and was buried in Great Gransden in 1832.

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