John Shebbeare
| John Shebbeare | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | 1709 Bideford, Devonshire, England |
| Died | 1 August 1788 Pimlico, London, England |
| Occupation | satirical Writer |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | political satire |
John Shebbeare (1709–1788) was a British Tory political satirist.
He was the eldest son of an attorney and corn-factor of Bideford, Devonshire. A hundred and a village in Devon, where the family had owned land, bear their name. Shebbeare was educated at the free school, Exeter, under Zachariah Mudge, and there, it is said, "gave evidence of his future eminence in misanthropy and literature." In his sixteenth year he was apprenticed to a surgeon, and afterwards set up for himself. Having, however, lampooned both his master and the members of the Exeter corporation, he in 1736 removed to Bristol, where he later entered into partnership with a chemist. In 1740 he published A new Analysis of the Bristol Waters; together with the Cause of Diabetes and Hectic, and their Cure, as it results from those Waters, which was reissued in 1760.
In 1752 he went to Paris, where he claimed to have obtained a medical degree, and to have been elected member of the Academy of Sciences. But he found his pen more remunerative than his practice. Settling in London, he began his career as a political writer in 1754, with The Marriage Act, a novel, dedicated to John Russell, 4th Duke of Bedford, one of the chief opponents of Lord Hardwicke's reform. The author was imprisoned for his reflections on the legislature, but his book was reissued in 1755 as Matrimony, and reappeared in 1766. Shebbeare followed up his success in 1756 by an attack on the Duke of Newcastle in the form of Letters on the English Nation, by Batista Angeloni, a Jesuit resident in London, of which he professed to be the translator only. This political satire, modelled on Bolingbroke's writings against Robert Walpole, alone entitled Shebbeare (in the opinion of Boswell) to a respectable name in literature. Meanwhile, he attacked the ministry directly in the Monitor and the Con-test, as well as in a series of outspoken pamphlets entitled Letters to the People of England, having, it was said, determined to write himself into a post or into the pillory.
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