Given the unprecedented number of dramatists writing in the nineteenth century, many of whom wrote perhaps only one play and had no other claim to fame, or worked in only provincial or itinerant theatre, it is safe to assert that the vast majority do not appear in any of the biographical dictionaries. And there is a whole host of very active minor theatre melodramatists, such as H. M. Milner and John Walker, who are biographical blanks. Nonetheless, despite playwrights having on the whole been less well served than actors of the period, the range of reference materials available is reasonably extensive. In the summary which follows I have included all general sources consulted for the biographical material in chapter I and for the birth and death dates of dramatic authors (where known) appearing in the index of plays and playwrights.

The period is remarkable for its wealth of reminiscence and autobiography and some of the more prominent playwrights – for example, Thomas Holcroft, Tom Dibdin, Reynolds, Planché, Stirling, Fitzball, G. R. Sims, and Burnand – wrote substantial accounts of their respective careers. Others (e.g. Knowles and Robertson) were the subjects of more or less immediate posthumous biographies. Most of them, together with many of the other important dramatists of the period (as well as some lesser-known dramatists who had an additional literary aspect to their career) are entered either in the original issue of DNB, ed.