Gildon, Charles, 1665-1724

Charles Gildon (c. 1665 – 1 January 1724), was an English hack writer and translator. He produced biographies, essays, plays, poetry, fictional letters, fables, short stories, and criticism. He is remembered best as a target of Alexander Pope in Pope's Dunciad and his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot and as an enemy of Jonathan Swift. Due to Pope's caricature of Gildon as well as the volume and rapidity of his writings, Gildon has become the epitome of the hired pen and literary opportunist. He is a literary source for many biographies of Restoration figures, although he appears to have propagated or introduced errors. Gildon's biographies are often the only biographies available, but they have often been shown to have invention in them.