Thomas Medwin

Thomas Medwin (1788–1869) was an early 19th-century English poet and translator, who is chiefly known for his biographies of his cousin Percy Bysshe Shelley and his recollections of his close friend Lord Byron.

Early life

Thomas Medwin was born in the market town of Horsham, West Sussex on 20 March 1788, the third son of five children of Thomas Charles Medwin, a solicitor and steward and Mary Medwin (née Pilford). He was a second cousin on both his parents' sides to Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), who lived two miles away at Field Place, Warnham, and with whom Medwin formed a childhood friendship that continued into adulthood.

He was from a prosperous rather than a wealthy family that expected their sons to work for a living, and to this end he attended Syon House Academy in Isleworth between 1788 and 1804, the alma mater of Shelley from 1802 to 1808. Medwin related that at Syon House Shelley and he remained close friends, forming a bond that was close enough for Shelley to apparently sleepwalk his way to Medwin's room. Following a further year in a public school, Medwin matriculated at University College, Oxford in the winter of 1805, but left without taking his degree. Initially Medwin was articled as a clerk in his father's law firm in Horsham.