Charles Lamb Kenney

Who was Charles Lamb Kenney?

Charles Lamb Kenney was a journalist, dramatist and miscellaneous writer.

He was the second son of the dramatist James Kenney.

Commencing life as a clerk in the General Post Office in London, he joined the staff of The Times, to which paper he contributed dramatic criticism. In 1856, having been called to the bar, he became secretary to Ferdinand de Lesseps, and in 1857 he published The Gates of the East in support of the projected construction of the Suez Canal.

Kenney wrote the words for a number of light operas, and was the author of several popular songs, the best known of which were "Soft and Low" and "The Vagabond". He also published a Memoir of MW Balfe, and translated the Correspondence of Balzac He included Thackeray and Dickens among his friends in a literary côterie in which he enjoyed the reputation of a wit and an accomplished writer of vers de société.

See John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, 1660-1830, vols. vii. and viii.; PW Clayden, Rogers and his Contemporaries.

Kenney died in 1881 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London.