# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Farjeon, Benjamin Leopold

​FARJEON, BENJAMIN LEOPOLD (1838–1903), novelist, second son of Jacob Farjeon (d. 1865), a Jewish merchant, by his wife Dinah Levy of Deal, was born in London on 12 May 1838. Educated at a private Jewish school until he was ​fourteen, he entered the office of the 'Nonconformist' newspaper. At the end of three years, unwillingness to conform to the Jewish faith caused a disagreement with his parents. At seventeen he embarked for Australia, travelling steerage; during the voyage he produced some numbers of a ship newspaper, 'The Ocean Record,' and was transferred by the captain to the saloon. From the goldfields of Victoria he went to New Zealand, on hearing of rich finds there. Soon abandoning the quest of gold, he settled at Dunedin as a journalist. He assisted (Sir) Julius Vogel [q. v. Suppl. I] in the management of the 'Otago Daily Times,' the first daily paper established in the colony, which Vogel founded in 1861. Farjeon became joint editor and part-proprietor; but journalism did not satisfy his ambition, and he wrote a novel, 'Christopher Cogleton,' for the weekly 'Otago Witness,' in which Vogel was also interested, a play 'A Life's Revenge,' and several burlesques in which the leading parts were taken by Julia Matthews, who subsequently won a reputation in London. In 1866 he published at Dunedin a successful tale of Australian life, 'Grif,' and a Christmas story, 'Shadows on the Snows,' which he dedicated to Charles Dickens.
Encouraged by an appreciative letter from Dickens, Farjeon in 1868 returned to England. He travelled by way of New York, where he declined the offer by Gordon Bennett of an engagement on the 'New York Herald'; and settled in chambers in the Adelphi. During the next thirty-five years he devoted himself to novel-writing with unceasing toil. The success of 'Grif,' which was republished in London (1870; new edit. 1885), was maintained in a series of sentimental Christmas stories. 'Blade o'Grass' (1874; new edit. 1899), 'Golden Grain' (1874), 'Bread and Cheese and Kisses' (1874; new edit. 1901), and in many conventional three-volume novels mainly treating of humble life — such as 'Joshua Marvel' (1871), 'London's Heart' (1873), and 'The Duchess of Rosemary Lane' (1876). As a disciple of Dickens, Farjeon won passing popularity, but he turned later to the sensational mystery in which Wilkie Collins excelled, and there his ingenuity was more effective. 'Great Porter Square' (1884) and 'The Mystery of M. Felix' (1890) are favourable examples of his work in this kind. His best novel is the melodramatic 'Devlin the Barber' (1888; new edit. 1901). A play by Farjeon, 'Home, Sweet Home,' was produced by Henry Neville at the Olympic Theatre in 1876, and in 1891 George Conquest put on at the Surrey Theatre Farjeon's dramatised version of his novel 'Grif,' which had already undergone unauthorised dramatisation. In 1873 he sat with Charles Reade and others on a committee formed by John Hollingshead [q. v. Suppl. II] to amend the law so as to prevent the dramatisation of novels without their writers' assent (Hollingshead, My Lifetime, ii. 54).
In October 1877 he gave readings in America from one of his early successes, 'Blade o'Grass.'
Farjeon died at his house in Belsize Park, Hampstead, on 23 July 1903, and his remains were cremated and interred at Brookwood. He married on 6 June 1877 Margaret, daughter of the American actor, Joseph Jefferson; she survived him with four sons and one daughter. A head in pastels, by Farjeon's nephew, Emanuel Farjeon, a miniature-painter well known in the United States, belongs to the widow.
[The Times, 24 July 1903; Edmund Downey, Twenty Years Ago, 1905, p. 246; Tinsley, Random Recollections of an Old Publisher, 1900, ii. 309; private information.]
L. M.