Charles Whitehead
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{{for|the R&B/Soul singer|Charlie Whitehead}}
'''Charles Whitehead''' (1804 – [[5 July]] [[1862]]) was an English [[poet]], [[novelist]], and dramatist.
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, ''Richard Savage'' (1842, and perhaps his finest novel), and ''The Earl of Essex'', an historical romance (1843).
Whitehead recommended Dickens for the writing of the letterpress for R. Seymour's drawings, which ultimately developed into ''[[The Pickwick Papers]]''.
Whitehead had problems with alcohol and decided to travel to [[Melbourne]], [[Australia]] hoping for fresh start, arriving in 1857. He already was acquainted with [[Richard Henry Horne]], he befriended [[James Smith (journalist)|James Smith]] 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.
==References==
{{A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature}}
{{Dictionary of Australian Biography|First=Charles|Last=Whitehead|Link=http://gutenberg.net.au/dictbiog/0-dict-biogWe-Wy.html#whitehead1}}
*Clive Turnbull, '[http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A060422b.htm Whitehead, Charles (1804 - 1862)]', ''[[Australian Dictionary of Biography]]'', Volume 6, [[Melbourne University Press|MIP]], 1976, pp 391-392.
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]].
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitehead, Charles}}
[[Category:British poets]]
[[Category:People from London]]
[[Category:1804 births]]
[[Category:1862 deaths]]