author
John Tutchin
d. 1707
A fierce political journalist and satirist of the late Stuart era, he wrote with enough bite to make enemies in high places. His paper The Observator helped make him one of the most combative Whig voices of his day.
1 Audiobook
Selected Poems (1685-1700)
by John Tutchin
About the author
John Tutchin was an English writer, journalist, and political polemicist, born in Hampshire around 1660 or 1664 and dead on September 23, 1707. He is best remembered for The Observator, a lively and argumentative newspaper that made him a prominent radical Whig voice at a time of intense political conflict.
His career was shaped by controversy. He wrote satire, verse, and political prose, and he was repeatedly drawn into trouble for his attacks on powerful opponents. Earlier in his life he was also known for The Bloody Assizes, an account connected with the brutal punishments that followed the Monmouth Rebellion, which helped establish his reputation as a sharp and fearless political writer.
Tutchin's work captures the rough, partisan energy of early modern print culture. He wrote for readers who wanted politics to be immediate, personal, and hard-hitting, and his journalism gives a vivid sense of how dangerous public argument could be in late 17th- and early 18th-century England.