Tracing the dawn of the eloquent obituary
(John Thadeus Delane, courtesy of Wikipedia commons)
Kate and I had a brief, affable back and forth during discussion last week about the historical tone of obituaries — i.e., “Was the content presented directly and concisely or expressively and at length?”
Research has shown that obits have been on a creative upswing since their inception at the dawn of the printing press, beginning as short [death] notices and transforming into storytelling tools a few hundred years afterward. Pinning down where and when this revolution took place was a much easier task than expected, and there was one particular man to thank.
A Google Archive search of the obituary’s history, though surely imperfect and hardly scientific, reveals a timeline increasingly populated by the mid- to late-1800s. Per a bit of research, there was a name in journalism that, not coincidentally, was prevalent in regards to obit writing during that period: John Thadeus Delane, editor of The Times of London from 1841-77.