author
C. M. (Charles Molloy) Westmacott
1787–1868
A sharp-tongued journalist and novelist of Regency and early Victorian London, he built a reputation on satire, society gossip, and scandal. Writing at times as Bernard Blackmantle, he captured the bustle and bad behavior of fashionable life with a lively, combative voice.
2 Audiobooks
The English Spy: An Original Work Characteristic, Satirical, And Humorous. Comprising Scenes And Sketches In Every Rank Of Society, Being Portraits Drawn From The Life
by C. M. (Charles Molloy) Westmacott
The Punster's Pocket-book or, the Art of Punning Enlarged by Bernard Blackmantle, illustrated with numerous original designs by Robert Cruikshank
by C. M. (Charles Molloy) Westmacott
About the author
Born around 1787 or 1788 and dying in 1868, this British writer and journalist is best known as Charles Molloy Westmacott. He worked as an author and newspaper editor, and is especially associated with The Age, an influential Sunday paper of the early 1830s.
Westmacott also wrote under the pseudonym Bernard Blackmantle. His books and journalism drew heavily on the manners, entertainments, and intrigues of high society, often mixing observation, satire, and a taste for controversy.
Sources on his life describe him as connected to the sculptor Richard Westmacott and note that he trained in art before turning to print. Today he is remembered less as a quiet literary figure than as an energetic man of the press whose work offers a vivid glimpse of London’s social world in the early nineteenth century.