Not simply a collaborator with his brother Thomas, Joseph Warton has a significant place of his own in the history of English literature. To know Warton is to understand and appreciate the vibrant literary milieu of the mid and late eighteenth century.
Joseph Warton was born in April of 1722 (baptized on 22 April) at the vicarage of his maternal grandfather in Dunsfold, Surrey. He was the child of Elizabeth and Thomas Warton, who was then Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. A year later the family moved to Basingstoke, Hampshire--where, after a time, Thomas became headmaster at the local grammar school. While at Basingstoke, Joseph Warton witnessed the birth of his sister, Jane, in 1724 and brother, Thomas, in 1728. Warton's education continued at Winchester College (1736-1740) and at Oriel College, Oxford (1740-1744), where he took a B.A. degree. While at Winchester, Warton made the acquaintance of young William Collins--the intimacy between them having a considerable effect on Warton's literary direction.
In these years, Joseph Warton began his brief but fruitful career as a poet, writing initially satirical verse in a "Popean" vein (for example, Fashion: An Epistolary Satire to a Friend in 1742), but then venturing far away from any established literary models with The Enthusiast (1744; revised and enlarged in 1748).
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