William Mudford (1782–1848): Writer, translator and journalist. Born in London, the son of a shopkeeper in Piccadilly. His first novel, Augustus and Mary, was published in 1803. Thereafter Mudford moved between translation, editing and writing biographies, fiction and journalism. His best-known writings were short stories for Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, especially ‘The Iron Shroud’ (1830), which may have inspired Edgar Allen Poe’s (1809–1849) ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (1842). Mudford was a committed Tory and a strong supporter of George Canning, opinions that were reflected in his career as a journalist. He first worked on the Morning Chronicle, before joining the staff of the Courier, editing that newspaper from c. 1817 until 1828. He then moved to Kent where he became the editor, and later the owner, of the Kentish Observer, before finishing his career as editor of the Sunday newspaper, John Bull 1841–1848. Southey addressed the two letters he published in the Courier in 1822 and 1824 to the editor of the newspaper, who, at that time, was Mudford.