John Oldham (poet)

John Oldham (August 9, 1653 – December 7, 1683) was an English poet.

He was born in Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire and received a B. A. degree from the University of Oxford in 1674. He took a position as an usher at Croyden School, where the Earl of Rochester visited him to compliment him on his poetry.

Oldham was a satirist who imitated the classical satires of Juvenal. His best-known works are A Satire Upon a Woman Who by Her Falsehood and Scorn Was the Death of My Friend, written in 1678 and A Satire against Virtue, written in 1679. His translations of Juvenal were published after his death.

He died aged 30 in Holm Pierrepont near Nottingham, of smallpox. John Dryden wrote an elegy on his death.