EDWARD Bright was widely believed to be England's fattest man and he died aged just 29 and weighing 42 stones in November 1750.
His image has been immortalised in a bronze plaque in Maldon's Kings Head Courtyard off the High Street.
In the 1740s the young grocer gained the unfortunate distinction of becoming known as England's fattest man. Immediately after his death, his immense girth was commemorated in prints.
And on 1 December 1750, just three weeks after his death, a wager took place at the Bull Inn whether or not five local men could be buttoned into his enormous waistcoat 'without breaking a stitch or straining a button'.
In the event seven men were 'with the greatest ease included'.
All this is already well-known in Maldon, where there is a blue plaque to Bright and a fine bronze relief depicting the wager.
But the book reveals that there was much more to Bright than being just a very fat grocer.
He was born in 1721 into a Great Waltham Nonconformist and farming family, and was descended on his mother's side from Oliver Cromwell's family.
In September 1733 he was sent to Maldon to become apprentice to Joseph Pattisson, a well-to-do grocer and prominent Nonconformist.
Bright duly completed his apprenticeship with Pattisson and by May 1744, when he took James Chalk from Moulsham as his apprentice, had already established his own grocery business in the town.
The book also reveals, for the first time, the location of Bright's shop as well as the workshop where he made candles.
Edward Bright had a younger brother, William, who became a farmer and miller at Witham and Hatfield Peverel, and a sister, Mrs Sarah Suckling of Thaxted, both of whom also were fat, Sarah weighing 20 stones when she died in 1765.
At his death Edward's wife, Mary, was pregnant with their sixth child.
Of those six children, only two, Edward and Mary, survived to adulthood.
His widow continued the grocery and candle making business, and in about 1752 remarried, to Thomas Bayley, by whom she had two more children.
Bayley died in 1767 and Mary then remained a widow until her death aged 66 in 1786.
A Maldon diarist, John Crosier, recorded that 'no-one excelled her in economy, attention and vociferation of tongue ... a good wife and an excellent mother'.
She was interred in the family vault in All Saints' church with her first husband, and an engraved floor slab near the tower marks their last resting place.
Edward Bright, junior, the son of Edward and Mary, was born in about 1743.
By 1766 he had set up his own grocery business, and in about 1770 built a new house in the High Street that remains to this day a prominent feature of the Maldon street scene.
Like his father, he was a Nonconformist, but also became a controversial figure.
In the 1770s he openly opposed the American War and sympathised with the cause of the American rebels.
He was active politically and in 1779 became leader of the Whig party at Maldon.
His last business venture was the construction in 1788-89 of a public sea water bath near St Mary's church.
He died in 1790, leaving a widow and nine children and was interred with his parents in All Saints' church. He, too, was a big man, but an obituary in the parish burial register records he was only 'about half the weight of his late father'.
The Bright family was prominent in Maldon for several generations, and a direct descendant of the first Edward, Maldon's famous fat man, still lives in the town.
The Borough of Maldon, 1688-1800: a Golden Age can be bought in Maldon from Crackbone Books and Ansell and Sons for £35.
