Horace Pym
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Horatio Noble Pym, known as Horace Pym (2 July 1844 – 5 May 1896) was a confidential solicitor, book collector and the editor of the best-selling private journal of the Quaker writer, Caroline Fox: Memories of Old Friends, published in 1881.
He is more properly known as Horatio Noble Pym and sometimes as H.N. Pym, was born 2 July 1844. He was the son of Rev. William Wollaston Pym, Rector of Willian in Hertfordshire and his second wife, Edith Elizabeth Noble. He is a descendant of David Mathews, the Loyalist Mayor of New York City under the British during the American Revolutionary War - his daughter Catalina married British Lt. James Lamb Jr. and they settled at the Lamb homestead in Rye, East Sussex.
Memories of Old Friends
He is famous for editing the twelve manuscript volumes of Journals of Caroline Fox, under the supervision of her sister, Anna Maria. In 1881 Smith, Elder & Co. published the selection as Memories of Old Friends; being extracts from the journals and letters of Caroline Fox of Penjerrick, Cornwall from 1835 to 1871, advertising the book in The Times for the Christmas Present market.[1] Despite the "extreme timidity"[2] with which he censored the text, the book was a surprise Victorian best-seller. A second edition was published the following year, with additional letters from J.S. Mill.
Marriages and children
Pym married successively two of Caroline Fox's relations.
On 12 September 1876 he married firstly Sarah Juliet Backhouse, daughter of Edmund Backhouse MP and his wife Juliet, a daughter of Charles Fox, the brother of Caroline Fox's father Robert Were Fox. They had three children, Julian (1877–1898), his brother Charles (1879–1971),[3] and Juliet, who was born and died in 1880. Her mother, Sarah Juliet Pym, also died in 1880.
Horace Pym then married Jane Hannah Backhouse Fox on 2 May 1881. She was the daughter of Barclay Fox, Caroline's brother and his wife, Jane (sister of Edmund Backhouse, Pym's first wife's father). Pym and Jane Fox Pym had two daughters.
Work as Confidential Solicitor
He practised as a confidential solicitor as the Principal of Thathams & Pym, 3 Fredericks Place, Old Jewry, London EC.[4]
