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Life
1810-1852 [Bartholomew Elliott George Warburton]; b. Tullamore, son of former inspector-general of Irish constabulary; ed. Cambridge, grad. 1833; Irish bar 1837; travelled in the Middle Eastern, 1843; influenced by Alexis de Tocqueville while in Paris; contrib. travel articles to Dublin University Magazine under editorship of Charles Lever’s, afterwards published as The Crescent and the Cross, or Romance and Realities of Eastern Travel, 2 vols. (1844), which ran through 17 editions; also Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavillers [?err. Cavaliers], 3 vols. (1849), French trans, 1851; Ede Memoirs of Horace Walpole and his Contemporaries (1851); many historical novels incl. Darien, or the Merchant Prince (1852); projected a History of the Poor in Dublin during his last visit; d. off Land’s End [var. nr. Darien] on board the steamer Amazon heading for Darien, West Indies, in an incident very like that narrated in his best-known novel. ODNB SUTH OCIL.
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References
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans 1988; rep. 1989), styles him ‘Eliot’; b. Tullamore, N. Ireland [sic], f. former insp. gen. of Irish constabulary; Cambridge, grad. 1833; Irish bar 1837; Middle Eastern journey in 1843; came under influence of Alexis de Tocqueville in Paris; persuaded by Lever to produce sociological travel book; The Crescent and the Cross (1844), successfully marketed by Henry Colburn along with with Kingslake’s Eothen (1844); regarded by Colburn as the best contemp. book he published; Warburton edited his br. George Drought Warburton’s Hochlaga [sic] or England in the New World (1846), and wrote 2 novels, Reginald Hastings (1849), 17th c. Ireland, and Darien, or The Merchant Prince (1852), his most popular work, with bloody scenes of torture, and an uncanny prefiguring of his own death by fire at sea. [BL 2.]
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: Catholic University of America 1904), gives passages on Cairo and Bethlehem.
British Library holds The Crescent and the Cross (1844; 16th ed. 1860; excerpts, the latest in Travel in Many Lands, 1915); Darien (4 edns. up to 1860);
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