Skip to main content
James Boswell .info logo James Boswell .info
  • James Boswell
  • Biographies
  • FAQ
  • Forum
  • Literature
  • Original sources
  • Scholars
  • About the site
Home

William Augustus Fawkener

Biography


Birth: abt. 1750
Death: 1811

Son of Everard Fawkener (1684-1758) and Harriet Churchill (ca. 1726-1777).1 In 1774 he married  Georgiana Ann Poyntz (1763-1851), but the marriage soon ended in divorce, and his then former wife married Lord John Townsend in 1787. He then married Elizabeth Wright, with whom he had two daughters.

A clerk to the Privy Council, he was in 1791 sent on a secret mission to Empress Catherine II of Russia.2

 

Life with James Boswell

Boswell rode with Fawkener, then a student at the Collegium Carolinum in Brunswick, from Brunswick to Wolfenbuttel on August 14, 1764. He described him as “a genteel, pretty, amiable young fellow”.

Notes

Note 1: Everard Fawkener is best known as the friend of Voltaire, at whose house the famous philosopher lived for a major part of his stay in England. He was also a silk merchant, secretary to the Duke of Cumberland, ambassador to Turkey, and postmaster general.

Note 2: Dictionary of National Biography, entry "Fawkener, Everard".


Mentioned in

William Augustus Fawkener is mentioned in:

  • Boswell on the Grand Tour: Germany and Switzerland 1763-1764

  • Add new comment
Google
Custom Search

Random biographies

Albrecht Friedrich von Anhalt-Dessau
John Hume
Parravicini Mawhood
William O'Brien
Samuel Spalding
Robert Dundas
James McAdam
Robert Maxwell
William Richard Middlemore
Jean Louis L'Estocq

Did you know?

During his stay in Berlin in 1764, Boswell lived in the house of Karl David Kircheisen, the president of the Berlin city council.

(C) Thomas Frandzen 2004-2010