author
Stephen Fovargue
d. 1775
An 18th-century Cambridge scholar with a sharp eye for mistaken beliefs, he is best known for writing A New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors, a lively supplement to Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica. His surviving reputation rests on that compact, curious work of skepticism and correction.
1 Audiobook
A New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors
by Stephen Fovargue
About the author
Stephen Fovargue was an English writer and scholar who died in 1775. The clearest detail consistently attached to him in surviving records is that he was an M.A. and a Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge.
He is known chiefly for A New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors, published in 1767. In that book, he set out to examine popular misconceptions and everyday false beliefs, carrying forward the tradition of questioning received wisdom that readers may know from Sir Thomas Browne.
Little biographical information about his life now seems easy to confirm, but his work still gives a good sense of his cast of mind: curious, argumentative, and eager to test common opinion against reason. For modern readers, he survives less as a fully documented public figure than as the author of one distinctive and thoughtful book.