Puseley, commercial traveller, merchant and writer, was the son of Henry Puseley, maltster, and was educated at Bideford Grammar School until the age of fifteen. Bereft of parents by then, he became a clerk in a London wholesale firm and attended evening classes at a literary and scientific institute. After working as a commercial traveller for some years, Puseley became a hosier and silk merchant but soon gave priority to his literary endeavours and closed the business. In 1844 he had married Mary Anne nee Darlington, daughter of a London builder. They had four sons.
Puseley's first book was Harry Mustifer (1847), a moralistic novella that sold only twelve copies in the first year of publication. Thereafter Puseley interspersed literary works - drama, novels and poetry - with the compilation of handbooks such as The Commercial Companion for the United Kingdom (1858) and developed a career as a public speaker on humorous, literary and political subjects. He also produced, often under the pseudonyms Frank Foster or An Old Author, pamphlets on a wide range of topical issues. In 1854 Puseley visited Australia and New Zealand for health reasons, and again in 1857, before returning to England permanently. His time in Australia led to his most interesting poem, The Wave of Life (1857), and his most commercially successful book, The Rise and Progress of Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand (1857). Puseley argued that New Zealand was 'the finest colony in the world' (p.232) but Australia he saw as 'the most objectionable of all British dependencies' (p.231). Failing health curtailed Puseley's lecturing career, and his ventures in fiction, Our Premier (1867) and All Round the World (1876), were not successful. Dingley (2004) asserts that 'Although Puseley's writings seldom rise above the level of hack work, he exemplifies in his industry and independence, the virtues of self-help he so strenuously championed.' He was a lifelong advocate for education for the poor and supported a range of charitable causes.
(Source: Adapted from Robert Dingley, 'Puseley, Daniel (1814-1882)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; William H. Wilde et.al. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1994): 633).
