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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  John Hookham Frere (1769–1846)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

John Hookham Frere (1769–1846)

Frere, John Hookham. An English poet, translator, and diplomatist; born in London (not Norfolk), May 21, 1769; died in Malta, Jan. 7, 1846. He was a Cambridge graduate, and one of the founders of the Anti-Jacobin (see Canning). After a career in the diplomatic service, he produced his original ‘Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work … Relating to King Arthur and his Round Table’ (1817), better known as ‘The Monks and the Giants’; a literary burlesque, but full of charming verse and of excellent character-drawing. It naturalized in English the ottava rima afterward used by Byron in ‘Beppo’ and ‘Don Juan.’ A version of a large part of Aristophanes succeeded this effort.