Barrett, Eaton Stannard (1785/6–1820), satirical writer, was born in Cork city, eldest son of Richard Barrett, gentleman; nothing is known of his mother. He was educated at a private school in Surrey (where he wrote a play, which was performed at the school), and at TCD (BA 1805). He was admitted (14 November 1805) to the Middle Temple, London. In 1807 his poem ‘All the talents’, satirising the whig government, was published under the name ‘Polypus’ and went through twenty impressions in a year. With this success, he used the ‘talents’ theme in further works, returning to it as late as 1816. His other poems included Woman (2 vols) and collected verse. He also wrote for the stage the three-act comedy ‘My wife! What wife?’ and a parody on ‘The beggar's opera’, and wrote romantic novels and burlesques such as The heroine and (under the name of ‘Cervantes Hogg’) The rising sun, The setting sun: or, Devil among the placemen and The metropolis. He died of tuberculosis in Glamorganshire, Wales, on 20 March 1820. The journalist Richard Barrett (qv) was his brother.
Sources
DNB; D. J. O'Donoghue, The poets of Ireland (1912); Alumni Dubl.; Register of admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple . . ., ii (1949); George Watson (ed.), The new Cambridge bibliography of English literature, iv (1969); Welch