A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Wakefield, Gilbert

by John William Cousin

Wakefield, Gilbert (1756-1801).—Scholar and controversialist, b. at Nottingham, ed. at Camb., took orders, but becoming a Unitarian renounced them and acted as classical tutor in various Unitarian academies. He was a strong defender of the French Revolution, and was imprisoned for two years for writing a seditious pamphlet. He pub. ed. of various classical writers, and among his theological writings are Early Christian Writers on the Person of Christ (1784), An Examination of Paine's Age of Reason (1794), and Silva Critica (1789-95), illustrations of the Scriptures.