Born in Derbyshire, he received very little education. When still a boy, he went to London where he began to work as a printer's apprentice. In London ha made his fortune in business and married his master's daughter. As he used to prepare letters for illiterate country people, he was asked to a book containing a series of model letters for those who were no able to write. From this suggestion came the idea for his first book, Panela or Virtue Rewarded, which tells in the forma of letters the story of a virus mai servant who resists the attempts of her master to seduce her and ends with the marriage of the couple. This is the first novel in the modern sense of the word written in a simple style for the middle an lower classes.
