This page is about the 18th century writer. For the 20th century British politician see Henry Brooke (politician).
Henry Brooke (1703 - 1783), novelist and dramatist, born in Ireland, son of a clergyman, studied law at Trinity College, Dublin, but embraced literature as a career.
Brooke began his career as a poet. His Universal Beauty was published in 1735, and Alexander Pope thought its sentiments and poetry fine. He then turned dramatist by adapting extant plays, such as The Earl of Essex. He wrote from the Tory point of view and got in trouble for his plays. His Gustavus Vasa (1739) has the distinction of being the first play banned by the Licensing Act of 1737. The play concerned the liberation of Sweden from Denmark in 1521 by Gustavus. Robert Walpole understood that the villain of the play resembled him. Further, a facetious "attack" on it was the first public writing of Samuel Johnson, who takes an ironic stance of the censors and argues that all such seditions should be banned.
Brooke lived in Ireland most of his life, but he spent time in London when his plays were on the stage. In politics, he was somewhat radical in arguing publically for loosening the laws persecuting Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom. His daughter, Charlotte Brooke would herself be an important figure in the history of Irish literature by publishing Reliques of Irish Poetry and working to increase the profile of Irish language poetry.
Later, his Earl of Essex came back to the boards in a revival. Again, Samuel Johnson offered his public support of Brooke, but when he heard the Earl saying at the end of Act II, "He who rules o'er free men must himself be free," Johnson replied, "He who drives fat oxen must himself be fat." Although Johnson was objecting to the misuse and overuse of "freedom" and was at that time in a vexatious debate over the United States War of Independence (saying, "Why is it that we hear the loudest cries for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?"), Brooke was mortified by Johnson's parody and changed the line for his Collected Works (released by his daughter).
Brooke had a difficult life and made a very poor living. His greatest commercial successes came from the Earl of Essex and his two novels. The Fool of Quality (1760 - 1772) and Juliet Grenville (1774) are sentimental novels of some value. John Wesley loved The Fool of Quality so much that he sought to have a copy of it given out to all new Methodist churches.
He had twenty-two children. Of these, only one survived, his daughter Charlotte. Charlotte shepherded his Works through the press after his death, and she herself was a writer. She wrote Reliques of Irish Poetry (1789). She died in 1793.