Henry Brereton Code

Died 1830
Period of Activity active c. 1803-1830
Gender Male
Biographical Notes Henry Brereton Code (?–?1830), songwriter, dramatist and, from 1820 to 1830, editor of the Warder, a prominent Tory weekly newspaper. Said to have been a Government spy in 1798, he was the subject of attacks in the Irish Magazine in 1813 and in Thomas Furlong's The Plagues of Ireland (1824). Author of songs and some minor literary works, among them an anti-Napoleonic play, The Russian Sacrifice; or, The Burning of Moscow (1813). He used the pen name Gregory Greendrake for The angling excursions of Gregory Greendrake, Esq. in the counties of Wicklow, Meath, Westmeath, Longford, and Cavan, with additions, by Geoffrey Greydrake, Esq. Dedicated to “all honest brothers of the angle” (Dublin: Grant and Bolton, 1824). Within the text there are references to the Warder, which appear to confirm that the book’s author was its editor, or at least closely connected with it. There has been a divergence of views about who this was, and the book has been variously attributed to Henry Brereton Code and J. Coad. D.J. O'Donoghue states that J. Coad is Henry Brereton Code, and that his real name was Cody. Nonetheless, in a burlesque work purporting to be an account of a trial, the editor of The Warder is made to assert that his name is Code and not Cody. To add some further confusion, Geoffrey Greydrake, the author of the additions, is Thomas Ettingsall, but has sometimes been misspelt as Ellingsall.

Sources:
Ralph Thomas, Handbook of fictitious names) (London: John Russell Smith, 1868).
D. J. O'Donoghue, The Poets of Ireland. A biographical and bibliographical dictionary of Irish writers of English verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis & Co., 1912), pp. 71-72.
Trial of Sir Harcourt Lees, Bart. (Dublin: Henry McPherson, 1823), p. 23.
Robert Welch, The Concise Oxford Companion to Irish Literature (2003), online. Accessed 20.1.2018.

Works

Travel Account(s)

Images

Lough Dan, Co. of Wicklow (Author of travel text)