Biography who who charles whitehead

​WHITEHEAD, CHARLES (1804–1862), poet, novelist, and dramatist, the son of a wine merchant, was born in London ​in 1804.

He began life as a clerk in a mercantile house, but soon adopted literature as his profession. In 1831 he published ‘The Solitary,’ a poem in the Spenserian stanza, showing genuine imagination. The poem won the approval of Professor Wilson in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ,’ and of other critics of eminence.

In 1834 appeared Whitehead's ‘Lives and Exploits of English Highwaymen’ (probably written some years earlier, the least worthy of his productions), and ‘The Autobiography of Jack Ketch,’ a burlesque biography of the hangman, which contained a remarkable episodical story of serious intent, ‘The Confession of James Wilson.’ Whitehead's vivid blank-verse drama, ‘The Cavalier,’ the plot of which is laid in Restoration times, was produced at the Haymarket Theatre on 15 Sept.

1836, with Elle