Once a highly-regarded London author, Charles Whitehead was a friend of Charles Dickens, William M. Thackeray, Douglas Jerrold and other notable English writers. According to J. F. Hogan in a review of Whitehead's biography, Whitehead fell out of grace with his literary acquaintances in England due to 'a too-ready recourse to stimulants' and other weaknesses of his nature and temperament ('An Australian Literary Trio').
Whitehead emigrated to Australia during the gold rush era (departing England in November 1856 on the ship Diana), in an attempt to make a fresh start in a new world, and settled in Melbourne to re-establish his literary career. He wrote for the Examiner and Melbourne Punch, and also became a leading contributor of articles and theatrical notices for the Melbourne journal My Note Book. Whitehead's novels A Winter Night's Dream, or, What You Please and Emma Latham, or, Right at Last were serialised in My Note Book. Additionally, his novella 'Nemesis', orginally published in the UK in Dickens's Household Words in 1856, was republished in the Age (1856) and in My Note Book (1858).
Whitehead died in poverty and neglect in the Melbourne Hospital in 1862. The entry for him on the hospital's books states that he died 'from the effects of destitution' (Mackenzie Bell, A Forgotten Genius, 1884). His later biographer, Clive Turnbull, gives Whitehead's cause of death as 'hepatitis and bronchitis' (Mulberry Leaves: The Story of Charles Whitehead (1945): 42). Whitehead was subsequently buried in an unmarked pauper's grave in the Melbourne Cemetery. Turnbull states that Whitehead's 'last friend', a Dr Neild, attempted to have Whitehead's body exhumed and 'buried in more seemly ground', but this attempt was unsuccessful (42).
Whitehead's works published in England before his arrival in Australia include his best-known novel Richard Savage, a Romance of Real Life (1831, 1842), Lives and Exploits of English Highwaymen, Pirates and Robbers: Drawn from the Most Authentic Sources (1834), Lives and Exploits of the Most Noted Highwaymen, Robbers and Murderers of All Nations (1838), The Autobiography of a Notorious Legal Functionary (1838), The Earl of Essex: A Romance (1843), The Life and Times of Sir Walter Raleigh (1854) and Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi (edited and revised by Whitehead in 1846).
