Profile: Matthew Wells

About This Author

Since retirement a couple of years ago, I have set about indulging my long time interests in family history and writing. These two hobbies combining to produce various works I have published over the last few years. In 2014 I self-published what to date is believed to be the only biography of Rev Dr Charles Burton (1793-1866) - 'The Reverend Doctor Charles Burton - A biography of Manchester's forgotten man of the cloth'. Continuing the theme of writing about people long-forgotten, I have just completed the preparation of a new edition of long forgotten Victorian author Lydia Helen Burton's first novel 'Bertha Darley or, Life in Her Husband's Curacies,' which was originally published by James Blackwood in 1858. This new edition, for which I have prepared copious notes on the text and contributed an introduction, is due to be published by FeedARead.com very soon. Prior to 'Bertha Darley', in 2017 I published, via FeedARead, 'Rambling around Tudeley', an account of a year (1987) spent walking with my daughter around my then home parish in the Weald of Kent. My current project, not long hopefully to come to fruition via FeedARead, is 'The Trial of Joseph Dale', a rather tragic but true story of the life and death of a naive young man who was hanged in 1824 for his part in one of the most brutal murders of the Georgian era.