Charles Richard Wilton

Charles Richard Wilton (25 May 1855 – 8 March 1927) was a journalist in the State of South Australia, a longtime literary editor of The Advertiser and authored, under the pen name of "Autolycus", a long-running weekly column in The Courier of Mount Barker.

He was born in Brunswick, Victoria to John Wilton (ca.1824 – 17 October 1903) and his first wife, his cousin Sarah Nowill Wilton (1815–1862). Richard Wilton, canon of York Cathedral, was an uncle.

He began his working life as an "articled" clerk in a Melbourne law firm, but left them around 1878 to work as a draughtsman for the Adelaide architectural firm of Woods & McMinn. He had a literary bent, and some years previously had started writing for the Press, and had articles published in the Melbourne Spectator and Melbourne Daily Telegraph. This was the very paper which employed him in his next change of career, as a relieving sub-editor. It seems that he had affinity for printers' ink, for by 1877 he had left architecture to join J. C. F. Johnson, Dan Magill, and W. J. Kennedy, in producing the Adelaide Punch. For a time he replaced George Ash as editor of the Narracoorte Herald, then for eight years edited the Mount Barker Courier. He never lost contact with the people of Mount Barker, and as "Autolycus" (subtitled "A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles"), contributed a weekly column to the Courier for 36 years; right up to the week of his death. He also used this nom de plume for occasional contributions to The Bulletin.

In 1889 he returned to Melbourne, where he edited the Weekly Times, and sub-edited the Melbourne Daily Telegraph in place of Joe Melvin. In his spare time he edited Life a popular magazine first appearing in 1904.

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