Richard Cobbold

author

Richard Cobbold

1797–1877

A country clergyman with a storyteller’s eye, he turned Suffolk history and local legend into lively Victorian reading. He is best remembered for bringing the tale of Margaret Catchpole to a wide audience and for leaving a vivid record of village life in Wortham.

2 Audiobooks

The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl

The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl

by Richard Cobbold

Geoffery Gambado : $b or, A simple remedy for hypochondriacism and melancholy splenetic humours

Geoffery Gambado : $b or, A simple remedy for hypochondriacism and melancholy splenetic humours

by Richard Cobbold

About the author

Born in Ipswich in 1797, Richard Cobbold was a British writer and Church of England clergyman. He studied at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, was ordained in 1820, and spent most of his working life as rector of Wortham in Suffolk, a post he held for more than fifty years.

Cobbold wrote novels, religious works, and local history, often drawing on East Anglian settings and stories. His best-known book is The History of Margaret Catchpole, a Suffolk Girl (1845), which helped fix the real-life smuggler and adventurer in the Victorian imagination. He also wrote Freston Tower and The Biography of a Victorian Village, showing his strong feel for place and for the drama hidden in everyday local history.

He came from the well-known Cobbold family of Ipswich; his mother, Elizabeth Cobbold, was also a writer. Richard Cobbold died on January 5, 1877, only days after his wife Mary Anne, and was buried at Wortham, the village most closely tied to both his ministry and his books.