Charles Gildon
Charles Gildon (c. 1665 – 1 January 1724), was an English
hack writer who was, by turns, a translator, biographer, essayist, playwright, poet, author of fictional letters, fabulist,
short story author, and
critic. He provided the source for many lives of
Restoration figures, although he appears to have propagated or invented numerous errors with them. He is remembered best as a target of
Alexander Pope's in both ''
Dunciad'' and the ''
Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot'' and an enemy of
Jonathan Swift's. Gildon's biographies are, in many cases, the only biographies available, but they have nearly without exception been shown to have wholesale invention in them. Because of Pope's caricature of Gildon, but also because of the sheer volume and rapidity of his writings, Gildon has come to stand as the epitome of the hired pen and the literary opportunist.
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