Edward Augustus Kendall

Who is Edward Augustus Kendall?

Edward Augustus Kendall, translator, social campaigner and miscellaneous writer, was born about 1776. He died at Pimlico 14 October 1842. He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

Though Americans remember him for his Travels through the Northern Parts of the United States, published in 1809, Kendall’s main claim to fame are his books for children, in which he represented the characters of animals in new ways, giving them a speaking voice. Whilst there were other writers, including Dorothy Kilner, Sarah Trimmer, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and her brother John Aikin, who made smaller contributions, Kendall played a major and crucial part in shifting the representation of animals in literature from the fabulous, the allegorical and the satirical to the naturalistic and empathetic. His Keeper's Travels in Search of His Master, Crested Wren, and Burford Cottage and its Robin Red Breast, are the natural predecessors of Water Babies and The Wind in the Willows. Employing new narrative techniques for representing thought in fiction, Kendall pioneered writers’ attempts to imagine and describe the experiences of animals.

During 1807 and 1808, Kendall travelled through the northern parts of the United States of America, as a result of which he published his historically important three-volume topographical dictionary Travels through the northern parts of the United States. Following this, Kendall spent a number of years in Canada working for the Hudson’s Bay Company; after which spent time in British India and the Cape Colony.