WHITEHEAD, WILLIAM (1 71 5-1 785) , English poet laureate, son of a baker, was born at Cambridge, and baptized on Feb. 12, 1715. His father had extravagant tastes, and spent large sums in ornamenting a piece of land near Grantchester, after wards known as "Whitehead's Folly." William was educated at Winchester college and Clare Hall, Cambridge. He became a fel low of Clare in 1742. At Cambridge Whitehead published an epistle "On the Danger of writing Verse" and other poems. In 1757 he was appointed poet-laureate in succession to Cibber. Whitehead's
most successful play was the School for Lovers (Drury Lane, Feb. 1o, 1762). David Garrick then made him his reader of plays. Whitehead died on April 14, 1785. He collected his Plays and Poems in See memoirs by his friend William Mason, prefixed to a complete edition of his poems (York, 1788). His plays are printed in Bell's British Theatre (vols. 3, 7, 2o) and other collections, and his poems appear in Chalmers's Works of the English Poets (vol. 17) and similar compilations.