Frere, John Hookham

Frere, John Hookham, 1769–1846, British writer and diplomat. He was a member of Parliament (1796–1802) and with his friend George Canning wrote effective parodies and satires for the political newspaper, the Anti-Jacobin. He was undersecretary of state (1799–1800) and minister to Lisbon (1800–1802) and Madrid (1802–4, 1808–9). Thereafter he devoted himself to writing, living most of the time in Malta. Frere's best work is in his metrical translations from Aristophanes (The Acharnians, the Knights, and the Birds, 1840).

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