Winthrop Mackworth Praed

Winthrop Mackworth Praed (28 July 1802 – 15 July 1839)—typically written as W. Mackworth Praed—was an English politician and poet.

Praed was born in London, United Kingdom. The family name of Praed was derived from the marriage of the poet's great-grandfather to a Cornish heiress. Winthrop's father, William Mackworth Praed, was a serjeant-at-law (1756–1835) and a revising barrister for Bath. His mother belonged to the English branch of the New England family of Winthrop.

In 1814 Praed was sent to Eton College, where he founded a manuscript periodical called Apis matina. This was succeeded in October 1820 by the Etonian, a paper projected and edited by Praed and Walter Blount, which appeared every month until July 1821, when the chief editor, who signed his contributions "Peregrine Courtenay," left Eton, and the paper died. Henry Nelson Coleridge, William Sidney Walker, and John Moultrie were the three best known of his collaborators on this periodical, which was published by Charles Knight, and of which details are given in Knight's Autobiography and in Henry Maxwell Lyte's Eton College.