ABSTRACT
Obituary notices are important sources of information for the biographer and historian. As considered summings-up of their subjects’ lives and achievements, published after their death, they claim to speak with authority. The obituary of Samuel Wesley which appeared in The Times on the day after his death on 11 October 1837 is a case in point. Before considering the obituary itself, a brief sketch of Wesley’s life and career will be in order. Samuel Wesley was the son of the Methodist hymn-writer Charles Wesley and the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. The most successful and active period in Wesley’s career was from around 1808 to 1816, when he was active in almost every field open to a London musician of the time: as a composer, a performer on the piano and organ, and as a journalist, critic and lecturer.
