James Kenney (dramatist) - Charles Lamb Kenney

Charles Lamb Kenney

James Kenney's second son, Charles Lamb Kenney (1823-25 August 1881), made a name as a journalist, dramatist and miscellaneous writer. Commencing life as a clerk in the General Post Office in London he joined the staff of The Times, to which paper he contributed dramatic criticism. In 1856, having been called to the bar, he became secretary to Ferdinand de Lesseps, and in 1857 he published The Gates of the East in support of the projected construction of the Suez Canal. Kenney wrote the words for a number of light operas, and was the author of several popular songs, the best known of which were Soft and Low (1865) and The Vagabond (1871). He also published a Memoir of M. W. Balfe (1875), and translated the Correspondence of Balzac. He included Thackeray and Dickens among his friends in a literary coterie in which he had the reputation of a wit and a writer of vers de societe. He died in London in 1881.