Author: Browne, Isaac Hawkins
Biography:
BROWNE, Isaac Hawkins (1705/6-60: ODNB)
He was born in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, on 21 Jan. 1706 to the Rev. William Browne, vicar of Burton upon Trent and prebendary of Lichfield, and his wife Anne Hawkins. He was educated first at Lichfield and then at Westminster School which he entered in 1719. He was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge on 12 Sept. 1721 but no record has been found for a degree. He entered Lincoln’s Inn on 5 June 1722 and was called to the bar on 27 June 1728. The parodies in his A Pipe of Tobacco were published in periodicals before being issued together in a volume in 1736. Other poems followed: Of Smoking was issued in 1736 and The Fire-Side in 1746. On 10 Feb. 1743 he married Jane Trimnell in St. Andrew’s, Holborn; her father was the archdeacon of Leicester. In 1744 and again in 1748 he was elected to the House of Commons to represent Wenlock, Shropshire; the family lived at Badger Hall near Wolverhampton. He died at home in Great Russell Street, London, on 14 Feb. 1760. He and Jane had one son, Isaac Hawkins Browne, who published an edition of his father’s poetry in 1768. Browne’s De Animi Immortalitate was not published in his lifetime but was translated by John Lettice (q.v) and issued in 1795. Byron (q.v.) claimed to enjoy Browne’s parodies. (ODNB 7 Sept. 2023; ACAD; Westminster School Archives at collections.westminster.org.uk; ancestry.co.uk 7 Sept. 2023)