John Moray Stuart-Young

Who was John Moray Stuart-Young?

John Moray Stuart-Young was an English Uranian poet, memoirist, novelist and merchant trader. Born John James Young in the slums of Manchester, Stuart-Young was poorly educated and treated badly by those around him. Beaten by his laborer father, his mother was forced to take in washing. All of his siblings died young of tuberculosis. He left school at 13, working for little reward as an office boy and clerk. After having been caught stealing money from a gas-mantle works, apparently to help establish himself as something of a literary gentleman, Stuart-Young was arrested and spent six months in prison. He was only 18.

He later spent many years in Africa, in such diverse places as Sierra Leone, Grand Bassa in Liberia, Conakry in French Guinea and later, Onitsha on the Niger River. In Onitsha, he worked as a trader to some measure of success. He would exchange European goods for African materials such as palm-oil, ivory and rubber. Stuart-Young was a strong critic of the work of missionaries. According to Stuart-Young, it was a photograph by Frederick Rolfe of a nude Egyptian boy that awoke in him, a schoolboy of fourteen, a fascination for Africa.