author
Philip Wharton
1834–1860
Best known by the pen name Philip Wharton, this young Victorian writer helped turn the gossip, glamour, and personalities of earlier high society into lively popular history. Though he died at just twenty-six, his books continued to be read and reprinted long afterward.
3 Audiobooks
The Wits and Beaux of Society. Volume 2
by Mrs. A. T. Thomson, Philip Wharton
The Wits and Beaux of Society. Volume 1
by Mrs. A. T. Thomson, Philip Wharton
Mrs. Mary Robinson, Written by Herself, With the lives of the Duchesses of Gordon and Devonshire
by Mary Robinson, Mrs. A. T. Thomson, Philip Wharton
About the author
Born in London in 1834, John Cockburn Thomson wrote under the name Philip Wharton. He was the son of the physician Anthony Todd Thomson and the novelist Katherine Thomson, and he studied in Bonn before attending Trinity College, Oxford, where he later took his B.A.
He is remembered for lively historical and biographical works written for a broad audience, including The Wits and Beaux of Society and The Queens of Society. Those books were associated with the shared pen names Grace and Philip Wharton, used by his mother and son team.
Thomson also worked as a Sanskrit scholar. He died in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, on May 26, 1860, while still very young, which makes the energy and range of his writing all the more striking.