William Woty

William Woty (1731?–1791) was an English law clerk and hack writer, known for light verse.

Life

Among his poems is an elegy on his schoolmaster, who lived near Alton, Hampshire. He came to London as a clerk or writer to a solicitor. He began speaking in debating societies and contributing short poems to newspapers. He subsisted for some years as a Grub Street writer.

About 1767 he became companion and legal adviser to Washington Shirley, 5th Earl Ferrers, who supported Woty by a charge on his estate in Leicestershire. He died at Loughborough on 15 March 1791, aged about sixty.

Works

Someone published in 1758, without his consent, in a borrowed name, a small piece of his composition called The Spouting-club. He himself issued in 1760, under the pseudonym of ‘J. Copywell of Lincoln's Inn,’ a volume entitled The Shrubs of Parnassus consisting of the "poetical essays" he had contributed to newspapers.

Woty's other works included:

References

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Woty, William". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. 

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