Wolcot, John

(1738-1819)

   He used the pseudonyms "Philomath Wizard" and "Peter Pindar." Born at Dodbrooke, near Kingsbridge, Devon, the son of a surgeon, he graduated in medicine from Aberdeen in 1767, and from 1767 to 1769 was physician to Sir William Trelawny, governor of Jamaica. Ordained in 1769, he seems to have spent his time between his two vocations. On the death of Trelawny, he set up medical practice in Truro, Cornwall, where his unorthodox methods brought him into dispute with his medical colleagues. Abandoning medicine in 1781, he moved to London to concentrate on writing, from which he derived a reasonable income. By 1811, he was almost blind. He died in London and was buried St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden. Some of his publications: Persian Love Elegies, 1773. The Captive King, ?1793. The Regent and the King, 1814. Royalty FogBound, 1814. Epistle to the Emperor of China, 1817. Some of his poems: "Pindariana: Ode to Two Mice in a Trap," "Resignation: an Ode to the Journeyman Shoemakers," "The Apple Dumplings and a King," "The Royal Tour, and Weymouth Amusements," "The Sorrows of Sunday, an Elegy."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). Peter Pindar's Poems. P.M. Zall, ed. University of South Carolina, 1972. Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Faber Book of English History in Verse. Kenneth Baker, ed. Faber and Faber, 1988. The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth Century Verse. Roger Lonsdale, ed. Oxford University Press, 1984. The Oxford Book of Satirical Verse. Geoffrey Grigson, ed. Oxford University Press, 1980. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000. The Works of Peter Pindar. Printed for Walker and Edwards, London, 1816.