Charles Whitehead

Charles Whitehead (1804 – 5 July 1862) was an English poet, novelist, and dramatist.[1]

For the R&B/Soul singer, see Charlie Whitehead.

Whitehead was born in London, the eldest son of a wine merchant. His most memorable works, which met with popular favour were: The Solitary (1831), a poem, The Autobiography of Jack Ketch (1834), a novel, The Cavalier (1836), a play in blank verse,[2] Richard Savage (1842), perhaps his finest novel; and The Earl of Essex, an historical romance (1843).[1]

Whitehead recommended Charles Dickens for the writing of the letterpress for Robert Seymour's drawings, which ultimately developed into The Pickwick Papers.[2]

Whitehead had problems with alcohol and decided to travel to Melbourne, Australia, hoping for fresh start, arriving in 1857.[1] He already was acquainted with Richard Henry Horne, he befriended James Smith and James Neild and wrote a little for the local press. He applied for admission to the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum in February 1862 in vain, a few months later he was picked up exhausted in a street and taken to the Melbourne hospital, where he died on 5 July 1862 of hepatitis and bronchitis and was buried in a pauper's grave.

Illustration from A romance of real life

Notes
  1. Serle, Percival (1949). "Whitehead, Charles". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
  2.  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). "Whitehead, Charles". A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
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gollark: no.
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gollark: They're already trying to snoop on everyone's private communications with the rather evil "EARN IT" (we need to stop these acronyms) thing.

References

Additional resources listed by the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

  • H. T. M. Bell, A Forgotten Genius; Charles Whitehead (Lond, 1894)
  • J. Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, J. W. T. Ley ed (Lond, 1928)
  • C. Turnbull, Australian Lives (Melb, 1965)
  • My Note Book, vol 3 (1858)
  • Examiner (Melbourne), 23 August 1862
  • Australasian, 17 November 1866, 24 September & 18 May 1889, 28 July 1894.
  • Archival material at
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