Portrait of Sir Brooke Boothby, 7th Bt (1743-1824), half-length, seated in a blue coat and brown overcoat, in a landscape

Sir Brooke Boothby, 7th Bt., was the eldest son of Sir Brooke Boothby, 6th Bt., and his wife Phoebe, daughter and heir of William Hollins of Moseley, Staffordshire. Educated at St. Johns College Cambridge, he was a minor poet and became a member of the literary circle of Lichfield to which Anna Seward, Dr. Erasmus Darwin , Thomas Day and the Edgeworths also belonged. He spent much time on the continent and is recorded in Italy where he visited Turin, Florence, Rome and Naples between 1775 and 1776. He succeeded to the Baronetcy on the death of his father in 1789 and married Susannah, daughter and heiress of Robert Bristoe in 1791. He is perhaps most famous for the portrait of him by Joseph Wright of Derby, painted in 1781 (now in the Tate Gallery). On his death he was succeeded by his brother William, as 8th Baronet.