John Home | Playwright, Poet, Scotland | Britannica (original) (raw)

Quick Facts

Born:

Sept. 21, 1722, Leith, Scot.

Died:

Sept. 5, 1808, Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh

John Home (born Sept. 21, 1722, Leith, Scot.—died Sept. 5, 1808, Merchiston Bank, near Edinburgh) was a Scottish dramatist whose play Douglas, according to the poet Thomas Gray, “retrieved the true language of the stage.”

Home entered the church, then fought against the Jacobites in the 1745 uprising led by Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie). When his play Douglas was produced (1756) in Edinburgh, the church, disapproving of the theatre, sent him a summons, which he ignored. In 1757 Douglas had a great success at London’s Covent Garden theatre, where the actor-manager David Garrick later produced other plays by Home. After returning to Edinburgh, Home resigned the ministry. He became private secretary to John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute (then secretary of state), and was later tutor to the Prince of Wales. He took up soldiering in later life, joining a regiment formed by the Duke of Buccleuch, but retired after a horseback-riding accident, afterward devoting himself to The History of the Rebellion of 1745 (1802). Among his friends were David Hume, Adam Smith, and Sir Walter Scott.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.