Author: Croker, John Wilson
Biography:
CROKER, John Wilson (1780-1857: ODNB)
The son of John Croker and his second wife Hester Rathbone, he was born in Galway, distinguished himself as a schoolboy in Portarlington, and received his BA from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1800. He then entered Lincoln's Inn and began publishing verse. He was called to the bar in Ireland in 1802 and practised law in Dublin. In 1806, he married Rosamund Carrington Pennell of Waterford; after the deaths of their two children, they adopted her youngest sister. He became an MP in 1807 and proved so able as a deputy for Wellesley (later Wellington) that he was appointed Secretary to the Admiralty in 1809--a position he held until 1830. From 1811 to 1854, he was a regular contributor to the Quarterly Review. He wrote authoritatively about the French Revolution, was a diligent editor (notably but controversially, of Boswell's Life of Johnson), but will probably be remembered primarily, in literary circles, as the anonymous author of a damning review of Keats's Endymion. (ODNB 29 May 2018) SR
Other Names:
- J. W. Croker
- John W. Croker
- T. C. D.