Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist and politician. Addison was born in Wiltshire and educated at Charterhouse School and Queen's College, Oxford. He excelled in classics and published a translation of Virgil's Georgics in 1695. After a brief spell in Europe he found himself unemployed until 1704 when he was commissioned to compose a work celebrating the Battle of Blenheim entitled The Campaign. A career in politics followed, although he continued writing poetry and plays, the most notable of which was Cato, A Tragedy. Addison heklped found the Kitcat Club, at which he and his friend Richard Steele worked to start The Spectator magazine. This engraving by Jacobous Houbraken, based on a portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller, is from Birch's 'The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain' published in 1752.