Whitehead, CHARLES

Whitehead, CHARLES, greatest poet of the name and the writer of at least one good novel, was born in London in 1804, the son of a prosperous wine-merchant. At first a clerk, he gave himself entirely to the life of letters soon after publishing The Solitary (1831), a poem of reflection of real promise. His Autobiography of Jack Ketch (1834) showed humour, and led to his being asked by Chapman and Hall to give them a popular humorous book in regular instalments. Fortunately for the world he declined, recommending to the publishers the young Dickens, who thus began the famous Pickwick Papers. His novel Richard Savage (1842) earned and deserved the praises of Dickens and Rossetti. Other works are the Cavalier, a poetic drama; the Earl of Essex, a historical romance (1843); Smiles and Tears, a collection of essays and stories (1847); and a Life of Ralceigh (1854). Whitehead unfortunately fell into intemperance, went out to Melbourne to start afresh in 1857, but again sank, lost his wife, and died miserably in 1862, leaving unfinished the Spanish Marriage, a promising poetical drama. See A Forgotten Genius, a monograph by H. T. Mackenzie Bell (1884).