Poet and writer. He was born in Nottingham, son of the dyer Hugh Atherstone (1743–1816) and his wife Ann (1747–1819). He was educated at Fulneck Moravian school. From 1807 he worked as a music teacher at the Franciscan convent school, Taunton, Somerset. He met Thomas Poole and probably through him made acquaintance with Southey. He published his first volume of poetry – The Last Days of Herculaneum; and Abradates and Panthea – in 1821. By 1822 he was planning a poem centred on the Anglo-Saxons, especially Alfred the Great, and wrote to Southey requesting assistance with locating information on these and related subjects. Southey replied and a sporadic correspondence ensued. Atherstone’s poem did not materialise, but his novel The Sea-Kings in England: An Historical Romance of the Time of Alfred appeared in 1830.