Richard Savage

Richard Savage (1697/8–1743) was an English poet and satirist whose year of birth is contested: he himself claimed to be the illegitimate son of the Countess of Macclesfield and Earl Rivers, and the dates given for his birth vary, so 1697 or 1698 is only an approximation. He lived by his pen and by patrons, was condemned to death for a tavern killing in 1727 and pardoned, and died in Bristol's Newgate debtors' prison in 1743.

The Wanderer (1729), dedicated to Lord Tyrconnel, is his best-known poem, a visionary meditation in five cantos in heroic couplets that sets the still life against the active. His friend Samuel Johnson told his story in the Life of Mr Richard Savage (1744), which shaped his later reputation and from which much of what is told about his origins derives.