John Cordy Jeaffreson

John Cordy Jeaffreson (14 January 1831 – 2 February 1901) was an English novelist and writer of popular non-fiction. He also spent periods teaching and as an inspector of historical documents.

Life

Jeaffreson was born at Framlingham, Suffolk, on 14 January 1831. He was the second son and ninth child of William Jeaffreson (1789–1865), a surgeon, and Caroline (died 1863), youngest child of George Edwards, tradesman there; and was named after his mother's uncle by marriage, John Cordy (1781–1828) of Worlingworth and Woodbridge. After education at the grammar schools of Woodbridge and Botesdale, he was apprenticed to his father in August 1845; but matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 22 June 1848, where among his undergraduate friends were the future novelists Henry Kingsley and Arthur Locker.

After graduating B.A. in May 1852, Jeaffreson lived in London for about six years, working as a private tutor and lecturing in schools. He also began to write. From 1856 he was a journalist, writing from 1858 for the rest of his life for the Athenaeum. He became a student at Lincoln's Inn on 18 June 1856 and was called to the bar on 30 April 1859, but did not practise law.

Jeaffreson moved in legal as well as in literary social circles. In 1860 he joined "Our Club", a literary group that was then a dining club, meeting weekly at Clunn's Hotel, Covent Garden. In 1872 Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy, a friend and deputy keeper of the Public Records, invited Jeaffreson to become an inspector of documents for the Historical Manuscripts Commission, and after palaeographical training at the Public Record Office he began work in 1874. He then concentrated on preparing reports and calendars of manuscript records.