Bage, Robert.

Robert Bage, the son of a paper manufacturer, was born in Darley, Derbyshire, where he was baptised on 28 February, 1728. His mother died shortly after his birth, and Bage lost the first of his stepmothers (his father eventually married four times) in 1732. According to his lifelong friend William Hutton, Bage was an intellectually precocious child who had, by the age of seven, impressed the neighbourhood by his abilities in Latin, and who later taught himself French, Italian and music. Late in life, Hutton also recalled that his own father had used Bage's accomplishments as an example to encourage Hutton's industry. Bage followed his father's trade, and after his marriage to Elizabeth Woolley of Mickleover in 1751, he started his own paper mill in the small town of Elford. It was, by all accounts, a happy and successful marriage, and the couple had three sons, Charles (b. 1752), Edward (b. 1754), and John (b. 1758). Bage maintained his intellectual interests as an adult, apparently following the scientific and cultural developments in nearby Birmingham with considerable interest. Although there is no evidence that he was familiar with the Birmingham Lunar Society - a group of intellectuals that included Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Erasmus Darwin, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, and James Watt - Bage was a long-time acquaintance of Darwin and might have met Priestley through their mutual friend William Hutton. Whether or not he knew these men personally, however, it is clear from his novels, particularly Man as he Is (1792), that Bage was both aware of and fascinated by their work. Despite these wide-ranging interests and abilities, Bage was never more than moderately successful as a businessman. Hutton, who was Bage's major customer and after 1761 apparently the sole purchaser of Bage's paper, estimated that his business had been worth an average of £500 a year to Bage from 1756 on, an income that would have been respectable, but no more, once all costs were deducted. Moreover, Bage had some serious financial setbacks. In 1766, he sold his mills to the Earl of Donegal, leasing them back for an annual fee; this sale might have been connected to his decision in the previous year to invest in ironworks with Darwin, among others. The ironworks failed in the late 1770s, and Bage lost a significant sum of money - Hutton, although unsure of the exact amount, thought as much as £1500. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]