Sir John Hawkins

Sir John Hawkins (born March 30, 1719, London, England—died May 21, 1789, London) was an English magistrate, writer, and author of the first history of music in English.

Hawkins was apprenticed as a clerk and became a solicitor. In 1759 a legacy enabled him to sell his practice. A Middlesex magistrate from 1761, Hawkins was elected chairman of the quarter sessions in 1765. He was knighted in 1772.

Hawkins wrote, among other works, an annotated edition of Izaak Walton’s Compleat Angler (1760) and legal articles. His biography of Samuel Johnson, published with his 1787 edition of Johnson’s works, was superseded only by Boswell’s. Hawkins was among Johnson’s closest friends and was an executor of Johnson’s will.

Hawkins’s General History of the Science and Practice of Music occupied him for 16 years. It was published in five volumes in 1776, a few weeks before Charles Burney’s celebrated General History of Music. Hawkins’s book continues to be invaluable as a mine of detailed information, some of it unavailable elsewhere, but it was eclipsed by Burney’s.