Benjamin Farjeon
British writer (1838-1903)
Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (12 May 1838 – 23 July 1903) was an English novelist, playwright, printer and journalist. As an author, he was known for his huge output.
Life
Farjeon was born in London to Dinah Levy and Jacob Farjeon, Orthodox Jews. He was raised in Whitechapel and had no formal secular education.
At 14, he entered the office of the Nonconformist, a Christian journal, to learn the printing trade. In 1854 he emigrated to Australia. During the voyage he was moved from steerage to cabin class because he had produced some numbers of a ship newspaper, the Ocean Record.
Farjeon worked as a gold miner in Victoria (Australia), started a newspaper, then went to New Zealand in 1861. He settled in Dunedin, working as a journalist on the Otago Daily Times, edited by Julius Vogel, of which he became manager and sub-editor.
Farjeon began writing novels and plays, as a self-confessed disciple of Dickens, whose attention he managed to catch.
The public source identifies “Benjamin Farjeon” as british writer (1838-1903). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Benjamin, Farjeon and British.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4888572. VIAF identifies the subject as 79136712. The Library of Congress control number is n85008091. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 2 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1838, 1903, 1854 and 1861.
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This entry incorporates text from “Benjamin Farjeon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.