Bright, Henry Arthur (1830-1884), author and merchant

Henry Arthur Bright was born 9 February 1830 in Liverpool to Samuel and Elizabeth Anne Bright. He was educated at Rugby School and attended Trinity College, Cambridge from 1847 to 1851, and earned his degree there, but as a Unitarian was unable to graduate until the Test Act was repealed in 1856. He and his friend and relative James Heywood were the first dissenters to graduate at Cambridge, in 1857. On leaving Cambridge he was made a partner in his father's firm of Gibbs, Bright & Co., a shipowning business with an Australian packet ship line. In 1852 Bright met American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who became a close friend. Bright wrote for 'The Athenaeum' from 1871 until his death, and also contributed to Unitarian and Christian newspapers. He wrote histories of the Warrington Academy and of his family, an account of the Glenriddell manuscript of the poems of Robert Burns, an edition of poems from Sir Kenelm Digby's Papers (published by the Roxburghe Club), and an edition of the unpublished letters of Coleridge (published by the Philobiblon Society). His best known book was 'A Year in a Lancashire Garden' (1879). His health began to fail in 1882 and he died at his home near Liverpool on 5 May 1884. He was survived by his wife Mary Elizabeth, whom he had married in 1861, and with whom he had three sons and two daughters.