Frederic Shoberl

Frederic Shoberl (1775–1853), also known as Frederick Schoberl, was an English journalist, editor, translator, writer and illustrator. Shoberl edited Forget-Me-Not, the first literary annual, issued at Christmas "for 1823" and translated The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.

Biography

Shoberl was born in London in 1775, and educated at the Moravian school at the Fulneck Moravian Settlement in West Yorkshire.

From 1809 he began editing Rudolph Ackermann's Repository of Arts which had just started and was only at its third edition. Ackermann was seen as the populariser of aquatint engraving and his Repository of Arts was intended to cover "arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions, and politics". At the beginning of February 1814, Shoberl and Henry Colburn founded and became co-proprietors of The New Monthly Magazine. For some time Shoberl was editor, writing many of the articles and reviews and editing Ackermann's magazine.

From 27 June 1818 to 27 November 1819 he was printer and publisher of the Cornwall Gazette, Falmouth Packet, and Plymouth Journal. The last was published in Truro in Cornwall.

In 1822 he was the founding editor of Ackermann's Forget-Me-Not which was an annual, a new type of publication in England. This was the first literary annual in English Shoberl continued to edit the annual until 1834. Shoberl also began overseeing Ackermann's junior annual, The Juvenile Forget-Me-Not from 1828 until 1832.

In addition to these editing tasks, Shoberl was an illustrator. He created his own hand-coloured engravings for The World in Miniature: Hindoostan which was published in London by Ackermann in the 1820s.