Robert Whitworth was a journalist and author active in Australia and New Zealand in the nineteenth century. Born in Devon, he had travelled to Sydney in the late 1850s and spent several years working in the city before moving to Brisbane and later Victoria. During his time in Melbourne he worked with the government printer Ferdinand François Balliere in producing gazetteers of the Australian colonies. This was the first, a gazetteer of Victoria, printed in 1865. Two others, on New South Wales and South Australia followed in 1866. In 1868, he was responsible for writing the libretto to James Churchill Fisher's cantana 'Under the Holly', performed in front of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh during his visit to Sydney that February.
Towards the end of the 1860s Whitworth travelled to New Zealand, settling for a time at Dunedin. He returned to Australia in 1874 and began to promote tourist excursions from Australia to New Zealand. He also produced two further gazetteers with Balliere, on Queensland (1876) and on Tasmania (1877).