author

John Courtenay

1738–1816

A sharp-tongued Whig politician and former army officer, he brought wit, reformist energy, and a taste for controversy to late 18th-century public life. His speeches and political writing placed him in some of the biggest arguments of his day, from parliamentary reform to the French Revolution.

1 Audiobook

A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786)

A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786)

by John Courtenay

About the author

Born in Newry, County Down, on August 22, 1738, he was educated at Drogheda Grammar School and first served as an officer in the British Army. He later moved into politics in England, building a long parliamentary career as a Whig and becoming known as an effective speaker with strong reforming sympathies.

He sat in Parliament for Tamworth from 1780 to 1796 and for Appleby from 1796 to 1807, returning briefly again in 1812. During these years he aligned with Charles James Fox, supported parliamentary reform and the abolition of the slave trade, and opposed the continued suspension of habeas corpus. He also held government office, serving as surveyor-general of the ordnance and later as a lord of the treasury.

He was active not only in debate but in print. A political poem on the French Revolution attacked Edmund Burke's anti-revolutionary stance, showing how directly he joined the ideological battles of the 1790s. He died on March 24, 1816.