Richard Howitt

Richard Howitt (1799–1869) was a British poet.

Life Howitt was born in Heanor in Derbyshire in 1799, was the son of Thomas Howitt and Phoebe Tantum. William Howitt, the writer, was his elder brother and Mary Howitt was William's wife. His younger brother was Godfrey Howitt. He spent his earlier years as a pharmacist in Nottingham, at first in partnership with his brother William, but finally on his own account. He farmed on the Heidelberg Road until his return to England in 1844 and published his experiences in Impressions of Australia Felix during Four Years' Residence in that Colony, Notes of a Voyage round the World, Australian Poems/ &c., 1845. This miscellany of prose and verse was described by Leigh Hunt as 'full of genuine pictures of nature, animate and inanimate.'

After a stay in Nottingham, Howitt retired to Edingley and published in 1868 a last volume of verse, Wasp's Honey, or Poetic Gold and Gems of Poetic Thought.