Richard Head

Richard Head (born ca. 1637 in Ireland, died before June 1686 at sea near the Isle of Wight) was an author, playwright and bookseller. He became famous with his satirical novel The English Rogue (1665) – one of the earliest novels in English that found a continental translation.

The most important primary source on Head's life is William Winstanley's biographical entry published in his Lives of the most famous English poets (1687) – a credible if not reliable source insofar as Winstanley could claim to have been personally acquainted with Head. According to Winstanley, Head was a minister's son, born in Ireland. His father was killed in the Irish rebellion of 1641, the incidents seem to be reflected in Head's English Rogue, the satirical romance he published in 1665. His mother took him to England where she had relatives in Barnstaple. They later moved on to Plymouth, to Bridport in Dorset where Head is known to have attended the town's grammar school in 1650. Head was eventually admitted to the same Oxford College his father had attended (possibly New Inn Hall, from which a John Head graduated in 1628). His financial means being insufficient Head was taken from college and bound apprentice to a "Latin bookseller" in London "attaining to a good Proficiency in the Trade", as Winstanley put it.

"His genius being addicted to Poetry" he published his first poetical and satirical piece which Winstanley recorded as Venus Cabinet Unlock'd. This may be a reference to Giovanni Benedetto Sinibaldi's The cabinet of Venus unlocked, and her secrets laid open. Being a translation of part of Sinibaldus, his Geneanthropeia, and a collection of some things out of other Latin authors, never before in English (London: Philip Briggs, 1658). Head married around that time. A second addiction to gambling cost him the profit he made as an author and with his shop.

Head moved – or fled – to his homeland Ireland, where he gained esteem with his first comedy Hic et ubique, or, The Humors of Dublin – printed with a dedication to the Duke of Monmouth at his return to England in 1663. The Duke's recompense remaining below expectations Head had to survive as a bookseller with shop addresses (so Sidney Lee) in Little Britain, and (so Gerard Langbaine) in Petty Canons Alley, off Paternoster Row and opposite Queen's Head Alley. Winstanley located him in Queen's Head Alley. If his reports are trustworthy, Head gathered some wealth in little time only to gamble it away again a little later.

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