ABSTRACT
William Ernest Henley was born on 23 August 1849 at 47 Eastgate Street, Gloucester, the eldest of five sons of William Henley (1826-68), and Emma Morgan (1828-88). William Henley senior was born in Cheltenham and was listed as a bookseller in Hunt's Cheltenham Directory, 1847. By the time of William Ernest Henley's birth two years later he was in the same business in Gloucester. No record of his marriage to Emma Morgan, a Cheltenham girl, has been found but there is a suggestion of a previous marriage on 5 November 1844 to a Sarah Cox in Cheltenham.
