William Gifford, "the British Juvenal," was the son of a glazier who went to sea and served an apprenticeship to a shoemaker before, supported by William Cooksley, a surgeon, attending Exeter College, Oxford (B.A. 1782). Gifford pilloried the Della Cruscans in the Baviad and Maeviad and contributed to the Anti-Jacobin (1797-98). The first editor of the Quarterly Review (1809-24), Gifford probably wrote the infamous review of Keats's Endymion (1818). Gifford's translation of Juvenal was frequently reprinted.
TEXT RECORDS:
1791The Baviad.
PUBLICATIONS:
The baviad. 1791.
The maeviad. 1795.
The anti-jacobin [joint editor]. 1797, etc.
Epistle to Peter Pindar. 1800.
The satires of Juvenal translated. 1802.
An examination of the strictures of the Critical reviewers on the translation of Juvenal. 1803.
Works of Ben Jonson, ed. Gifford. 9 vols, 1816.
The Satires of Persius translated. 1821.
The illiberal! verse and prose from the north! 1822.
Autobiography. 1827.
Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, ed. L. Rice-Oxley. 1924.
PROFILE AND
ASSOCIATES:
English
Anglican
Ashburton Free School
Exeter College Oxford
artisan
tutor
essayist
editor
translator
poet
The Sun
The Anti-Jacobin
Quarterly Review
Rev. William Beloe
George Canning
John Wilson Croker
George Ellis
John Hookham Frere
Bp. Reginald Heber
Rev. Francis Hodgson
William Jerdan
William Maginn
Edmond Malone
John Murray
Sir Walter Scott
Robert Southey
John Taylor Esq.
Elizabeth Trefusis
Francis Godolphin Waldron
REFERENCE:
DNB; NCBEL.
David Rivers, Literary Memoirs of Living Authors (1798); "William Gifford, Esq." Weekly Magazine [Philadelphia] 4 (27 April 1799) 84-85 [from Rivers]; "Peter Pindar and the Author of the Baviad" European Magazine 38 (August 1800) 86-88; "William Gifford" Monthly Mirror 14 (September 1802) 147-51 [portrait]; "Memoirs of William Gifford by himself" Port Folio [Philadelphia] 2 (25 September, 2 October 1802) 299-300, 308-09; "Memoirs of William Gifford" Gentleman's Magazine 72 (October 1802) 897-99; "Mr. Gifford" Port Folio [Philadelphia] 3 (21 May 1803) 164-65; "Biographical Sketch of William Gifford" Monthly Anthology [Boston] 1 (December 1803-February 1804) 63-70, 110-16, 161-70; Peter L. Courtier, ed., Lyre of Love (1806); Biographia Dramatica (1812); "William Gifford" The Champion (9 July 1814) 223; . Wedderburn Webster, "Letter to Gifford" Morning Post (19 December 1816);Biographical Dictionary of Living Authors (1816); "William Gifford" in New Monthly Magazine 10 (October 1818) 235-39 [portrait]; "The Editor of the Quarterly Review" The Examiner (14 June 1818) 378-79; "The Three Asses. William Gifford" The Examiner (6 January 1822) 4; Leigh Hunt, Ultra-Crepidarious: a Satire on W. Gifford (1823); Robert Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica (1824); William Hazlitt, "Mr. Gifford" in Spirit of the Age (1825); "William Gifford, Esq." Mirror of Literature 5 (1825) 218-19; A New Biographical Dictionary of 3000 Cotemporary Public Characters (1825); "Hunt and Gifford" Nic-Nac 4 (14 January 1826) 12-14; Living Poets of England: Specimens of the Living British Poets (1827); obituary in Morning Chronicle (2 January 1827); obituary in Literary Gazette (6 January 1827) 9; obituary in Literary Chronicle 9 (6 January 1827) 9-10; obituary in Gentleman's Magazine 97 (February 1827) 105-12 [portrait]; "Mr. Gifford" Monthly Magazine NS 3 (February 1827) 167-73; obituary in New Monthly Magazine NS 21 (March 1827) 125-27; obituary in Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature NS 1 (March 1827) 222-23; "Memoir of William Gifford, Esq." Imperial Magazine 9 (April 1827) 305-20 [portrait]; "Anecdotes of the Private Life of William Gifford" Literary Gazette (9 June 1827) 362-64; "William Gifford, Esq." Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction 9 (13 January 1827) 21-22; "Memoir of William Gifford" Literary Magnet NS 3 (1827) 142-52; The Georgian Era: Memoirs of the most Eminent Persons (1832-34); Allan Cunningham, "Literature of the Last Fifty Years" Athenaeum (November-December 1833) 852, 892; William Jerdan, Men I have Known (1866) 237-42; Robert Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature (1844); Allibone, Critical Dictionary of English Literature (1858-71; 1882); William Edward Winks, in Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers (1883); Foster, Alumni Oxon (1887-91); Samuel Smiles, Memoirs of John Murray (1891); David Masson, "The Story of Gifford and Keats" The Nineteenth Century 31 (1892); Wright, West-Country Poets (1896) 201-02; P. W. Clayden, Rogers and his Contemporaries 2 vols (1889); Moulton, Library of Literary Criticism (1901-05); C. W. Previte Orton, Political Satire in English Poetry (1910); Walter Graham, Tory Criticism and the Quarterly Review (1921); J. Longaker, The Della Cruscans and William Gifford (1924); Roy B. Clark, William Gifford (1930); Kenneth Hopkins, Portraits in Satire (1958); Renwick, OHEL (1963); ; Tim Burke, in Eighteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets (2003); Michael Gamer, "'Bell's Poetics': The Baviad, the Della Cruscans, and the Book of The World" in The Satiric Eye, ed. Steven E. Jones (2003) 31-35.
COMMENTARY RECORDS
for William Gifford:
BIOGRAPHY RECORDS
for William Gifford:
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(commentary records)
AUTHOR AS CRITIC:
(biography records)
1. | 1802 William Gifford: William Gifford, Autobiographical Memoir, 1802; Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (1831) 6:14-28. |