Charles Churchill (1732-1764) was the most important British verse satirist of the mid-eighteenth century. A close friend of the politician and journalist John Wilkes, he collaborated with Wilkes on the anti-ministerial paper The North Briton and devoted several of his satires to fighting Wilkes’s political causes. After his early death, Churchill’s poetry was much admired by William Cowper, William Wordsworth and Lord Byron, among others, but during the Victorian period his reputation suffered a downturn.
Churchill was born in February 1732 in Vine Street, Westminster. The son of a rector, he was one of twelve children, only four of whom survived to adulthood. When he turned nine in 1741, he was sent to …
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Citation: Bucknell, Clare. "Charles Churchill". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 December 2016 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=879, accessed 21 November 2024.]
