Self-educated English author and editor John Hawkesworth (c.1715-1773) worked as an attorney's clerk while contributing pieces, poems and articles to London publication The Gentleman's Magazine.
In the process, he made the acquaintance of Samuel Johnson, whose parliamentary reports appeared in the magazine as Debates of the Senate of Magna Lilliputia. Direct reporting of parliamentary proceedings was banned, so Johnson used his own words to reflect the participants' positions in the debates.
Since Hawkesworth's style was indistinguishable from his more celebrated acquaintance, he succeeded Johnson as the compiler of parliamentary debates in 1744.
In 1752 with Johnson and others, he started The Adventurer, a bi‐weekly successor to Johnson's Rambler. The magazine "was considered so morally edifying that the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred on him an honorary doctorate." (Lynne Truss, A bad book review can kill you).
Apart from his magazine contributions, Hawkesworth adapted works by Dryden and Southerne for the actor and theatre manager David Garrick, produced various original dramatic works and edited a twelve-volume edition of Jonathan Swift's work (1754–1755). He followed it with a larger twenty-seven-volume edition (1766–1779).
So Hawkesworth was a significant figure when the Admiralty commissioned him to rework James Cook's Journal from the Endeavour voyage for publication.
The resulting three-volume Account of the Voyages undertaken . . . for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere (1773) combined journals kept by Cook, his passenger Joseph Banks and the commanders of previous expeditions into the South Pacific.
Since it was an almost guaranteed best seller, Hawkesworth received £6000 for the publishing rights. However, that proved to be a poisoned chalice. Faced with material from different authors, Hawkesworth combined their voices into a single first-person narrator.
His refusal to admit to alterations produced a significant row with Alexander Dalrymple, who felt the work downplayed his contribution to Cook's voyage.
Cook famously detested the finished product and insisted on preparing his Journal from his second voyage for publication himself.
Perceived inaccuracies were one thing. Many critics regarded his descriptions of the manners and customs of the South Sea Islanders as lewd and immoral. However, his criticism (on theological grounds) of Cook's naming Providential Channel after his second narrow escape in North Queensland waters provoked criticism.
The severity of their responses is said to have hastened Hawkesworth's death.
On the other hand, (arguably) he brought it on himself. After all, the editorial practices and the selection of material were his choices.
A cocksure attitude had already alienated many of his friends, including Dr Johnson, well over a decade earlier.
He was buried at Bromley, the village in Kent where he and his wife had kept a school.
Sources:
Dinah Birch and Katy Hooper (eds), The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Chambers Biographical Dictionary
Encyclopedia Britannica
Lynne Truss, A bad book review can kill you – look at the case of John Hawkesworth, The Guardian 17 January 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/13/lynne-truss-bad-book-review-john-hawkesworth)