This shadowy figure may be the Chalkhill who entered Trinity College Cambridge in 1610, in which case he was not a friend of Spenser as stated on the title page of his poem. Various attempts have been made to identify him. He may have been coroner for Middlesex. A John Chalkehill of London took his M.A. from New College, Oxford in 1624 and was Vicar of Downton, Wiltshire (1637-41) and Rector of Ashley, Hampshire (1641), Foster, Alumni Oxon (1887-91). He may be the Joan. Chalkhill, Fellow of Winchester College who died at age 80 in 1679 (possibly the same as the New College Chalkehill). That he was an acquaintance of Izaak Walton (b. 1593) is certain.
TEXT RECORDS:
1640 ca.Thealma and Clearchus.
1640 ca.Thealma and Clearchus. [Conclusion.]
1640 ca.Thealma and Clearchus. [Continued.]
PUBLICATIONS:
Alcilia: Philoparthens loving folly [ascribed to Chalkhill]. 1613.
Thealma and Clearchus, ed. Izaac Walton. 1683.
Works, ed. Ryskamp and Westrem. 2000.
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL.
Elizabeth Cooper, in Muses Library (1738) 315; Joseph Ritson, Bibliographia Poetica (1802) 155; Censura Literaria 1 (1805) 1:160; William Beloe, Anecdotes of Literature 1 (1807) 69-74; Retrospective Review 4 (1821) 230-49; Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the XVIII Century (1817-58); Nathan Drake, in Shakespeare and his Times (1817; 1838); Robert Nares, "John Chalkhill the Poet not fictitious" Gentleman's Magazine 93 (November 1823) 417-19; Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); F. S. Merryweather, Gentleman's Magazine NS 9 (1860); Thomas Corser, Collectanea Anglo-Poetica III (1867) 260-66; Venn and Venn, Alum. Cant. (1922-27); Bush, OHEL (1945); Cummings, Spenser: The Critical Heritage (1971); Saunders, Renaissance Poets (1983); Chadwyck-Healey English Poetry Database (1995).
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for John Chalkhill:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for John Chalkhill: