John Hawkins (author)

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Sir John Hawkins (1719-1789) was a musician, author, and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson. He was the father of the novelist Laetitia Hawkins.

In 1760 the family moved to Twickenham, and Sir John became a local magistrate. After Johnson's death in 1784, he produced the first biography, published three years later. This has been largely eclipsed, except for specialists, by the far longer and more colourful work (with the same title) published by James Boswell four years later. But Hawkins had known Johnson about twice as long as Boswell, since the 1740s, and his work, from which Boswell freely pillaged, covers some aspects of Johnson much better. Hawkins was more attuned to Johnson's strongly religious nature, and was with Johnson when he died, unlike Boswell who had been in Scotland for some months.

[edit] Works

General History of Music (1776)
Life of Samuel Johnson 1787

[edit] Further reading

Percy A. Scholes - "The Life and Activities of Sir John Hawkins: Musician, Magistrate and Friend of Johnson", Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1954)