Thomas Frognall Dibdin
Calcutta India, 1776 - 1847, London
Upon graduation Dibdin chose the law as his profession. He initially studied under Basil Montagu of Lincoln's Inn and then settled in at Gray's Inn, and became a provincial counsel in Worcester. About 1801 he married Sophia, whom he had apparently met at Oxford, and had two sons (one died in early childhood and the other also predeceased Dibdin) and two daughters, one of whom married. While in Worcester he wrote various pieces, including two tracts on legal subjects (Blackstone's Rights of Persons and the Law of the Poor Rate) and some tales (including La Belle Marianne, privately printed in 1824), as well as contributions to the short-lived weekly on the arts and antiquities, The Quiz. Following the advice of his old Reading schoolfriend Thomas Pruen, he abandoned his unsuccessful legal career for the church, and was ordained a deacon in December 1804 and priest shortly thereafter in early 1805 by Bishop North of Winchester.
Dibdin's career as a bibliographer blossomed in 1802 with An Introduction to the Knowledge of Rare and Valuable Editions of the Greek and Latin Classics, published in Gloucester, which was well received in contemporary journals and allegedly sold out in six weeks. Although W. A. Jackson considered it ‘a paste-pot tabulated compilation from Edward Harwood's Views’ (1790), this slim volume of sixty-three pages introduced Dibdin to George John, second Earl Spencer, the possessor of one of the most valuable private libraries in the country. One of the great book collectors, Lord Spencer of Althorp became his patron for life, appointed him at one time his librarian, and obtained church patronage for him. Although he was chief cataloguer of the Althorp library, Dibdin could not read the Greek in the books he described, according to H. R. Luard's harsh assessment. In any event, his catalogue entitled Bibliotheca Spenceriana (4 vols., 1814–15) is replete with errors, yet Seymour De Ricci commented that it was ‘the handsomest and most elaborate catalogue of a private library yet issued’ (De Ricci, 75). Its principal value lay in Dibdin's careful establishment of the principle of first-hand examination of books, an important advance in the study of bibliography.
Dibdin's Introduction to the ... Classics was reprinted three times, in 1804, 1808, and 1827, each time being greatly enlarged and corrected. Ultimately it contains little of lasting value, but booksellers of his day frequently cited it. Perhaps his most famous book is Bibliomania, or, Book-madness, containing some account of the history, symptoms and cure of this fatal disease (1809); it included biographical sketches of the collectors of his day. It successfully caught the taste of the time among the aristocracy, and the second edition of 1811 had considerable influence in exciting interest in rare books and early editions, which peaked at the duke of Roxburghe sale of May and June 1812. This sale is notable for the fact that a 1471 edition of Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron, printed by Christofer Valdarfer in Venice, sold for the then enormous sum of £2260, paid by the marquess of Blandford. To celebrate its sale Dibdin proposed that the leading bibliophiles dine at St Alban's tavern on 17 June. With Lord Spencer as president and Dibdin as vice-president, this meeting was the beginning of the Roxburghe Club. The club eventually grew to thirty-one members, each expected to produce a reprint of some rare volume of English literature. In certain circles the club became a joke, in part because of the worthless character of some of its early publications—of which it was said by Luard that ‘when they were unique there was already one copy too many in existence’ (DNB)—but in large measure because of Joseph Haslewood's posthumous satire entitled Roxburghe Revels, which appeared in 1837. None the less, Dibdin must be credited with being the originator of the English publishing society.
Dibdin was further encouraged in his fine printing and bibliographical efforts by the financial success of Typographical Antiquities, or, The History of Printing in England, Scotland and Ireland (1810), which was based upon Joseph Ames's original work of 1749 and William Herbert's extensive revisions of 1785. In 1818, accompanied by artist George Lewis, Dibdin spent nine months in France and Germany visiting various public and private libraries, and eventually published an amusing three-volume account of his travels, full of follies and errors, entitled A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour (1821). The volumes were published in the spring of that year at £9 9s.; the plates alone were supposed to have cost £5000 and became a sought-after collector's item. This work's inaccuracies upset the French, and when M. Théodore Licquet and Georges A. Crapelet translated the entirety into French in 1825, they added numerous footnotes attacking the original.
In all Dibdin wrote more than forty-six different works including sermons and lectures under at least four different pseudonyms, two of which were Cato Parvus and Mercurius Rusticus. In 1819 he proposed a History of the University of Oxford on subscription; fortunately it was never undertaken, because Dibdin's works had become noted for their substantive and typographic errors. By the 1820s he auctioned his drawings and took, as he said, ‘a final leave of bibliography’ to pursue his clerical career more seriously; however, he still published The Library Companion in 1824, which was described as ‘a splendidly idiosyncratic, lucky dip of a book [which] abounds with errors, but is remarkably entertaining’ (Dibdin: Selections, ed. Neuburg, 129). His modest preferments included the preachership of Archbishop Tenison's chapel in Swallow Street, London, the evening lectureship of Brompton Chapel, preacherships at Quebec and Fitzroy chapels, the vicarage at Exning near Newmarket in Suffolk (1823), the rectory of St Mary's, Bryanston Square, in Marylebone, Middlesex (1824), and from 1831 until his death a royal chaplaincy-in-ordinary. This last position apparently saved him from arrest for debt in 1836.
Later in life Dibdin contemplated a History of Dover and a Bibliographical Tour in Belgium, but although he did some work on them, these never appeared. His two-volume apologia, Reminiscences of a Literary Life (1836), focuses on his professional efforts, and barely mentions his children or his long marriage. The end of his life is well documented in numerous letters to Philip Bliss, registrar of Oxford, which contain a sad picture of continuing pecuniary difficulties, leading to poverty and illness. Dibdin suffered a debilitating stroke in late 1845, and he died on 18 November 1847 at 3 Park Road, Kensington, London. He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. Although Lord Spencer had insured his life for £1000, there is some question as to whether Dibdin had in fact borrowed upon it, leaving his widow destitute.
Despite an extravagant and inflated style, Dibdin popularized the word ‘bibliomania’, a term evocative of that era's antiquarian interests; his main contributions seem to have been his zealous enthusiasm in promoting book collecting generally among the aristocracy, as well as putting forth the principle of first-hand examination of books in the compilation of bibliographies.
John V. Richardson Jr.
Sources T. F. Dibdin, Reminiscences of a literary life, 2 vols. (1836) · ‘Rev. T. F. Dibdin’, GM, 2nd ser., 29 (1848), 87–92 · S. De Ricci, The book collector's guide (1921), 75 · DNB · Thomas Frognall Dibdin: selections, ed. V. R. Neuburg (1978) · E. J. O'Dwyer, Thomas Frognall Dibdin, bibliographer and bibliomaniac extraordinary, 1776–1847 (1967) · D. A. Stoker, ‘Thomas Frognall Dibdin’, Nineteenth-century British book-collectors and bibliographers, ed. W. Baker and K. Womack, DLitB, 184 (1997), 69–80 · W. A. Jackson, An annotated list of the publications of the Reverend Thomas Frognall Dibdin, D. D., based mainly on those in the Harvard College Library (1965) · A. Lister, ‘George John, 2nd Earl Spencer and his “librarian”, Thomas Frognall Dibdin’, Bibliophily, ed. R. Myers and M. Morris (1986) · d. cert. · BL OIOC, N/12, fol. 263 [baptism] · private information (2011) [H. Vivian-Neal]
Archives BL, corresp., Egerton MS 2974, C.28.i.13 · Bodl. Oxf., corresp. relating to Reminiscences of a literary life · Col. U., Rare Book and Manuscript Library, corresp. · CUL, corresp. · CUL, notes on early printed books · Harvard U., Houghton L., corresp. and papers · Hunt. L., letters · JRL, letters · U. Edin. L., corresp. and papers :: BL, letters to Philip Bliss, Add. MSS 34567–34581, passim · BL, letters to Lackington & Co., Add. MS 28653 · BL, letters to S. Lahee, Add. MS 45498 · BL, corresp. with Sir Frederick Madden, Egerton MSS 2838–2841, passim · BL, letters to Lord Spencer · Bodl. Oxf., letters to Sir Egerton Bridges · Bodl. Oxf., letters to Isaac D'Israeli · Bodl. Oxf., corresp. with Francis Douce · JRL, corresp. and collections · JRL, letters to John Fry · JRL, letters to Nichols family · JRL, corresp. with Lord Spencer · Lpool RO, corresp. with William Roscoe · Magd. Oxf., letters to M. J. Routh · Man. CL, Manchester Archives and Local Studies, letters to John Fry · NL Scot., letters to Blackwoods · NL Scot., letters to Sir Walter Scott · Suffolk RO, Ipswich, account of the parish and church of Exning with MS additions by W. S. Fitch · Trinity Cam., letters to Dawson Turner · U. Edin. L., letters to David Laing
Likenesses oils, c.1800, Royal College of Music, London · Freeman, engraving, 1811, repro. in T. F. Dibdin, Bibliomania, or, Book madness: a bibliographical romance, 2nd edn. (1811) · H. Meyer, stipple, pubd 1816 (after H. Edridge), BM, NPG · T. Hodgetts, mezzotint, pubd 1821 (after T. Phillips), BM, NPG · J. Posselwhite, stipple, pubd 1835 (after G. Richmond), BM; repro. in Dibdin, Reminiscences · S. T. Arnold, oils, Garr. Club · W. Behnes, chalk drawing, BM [see illus.] · T. Phillips, engraving, repro. in Tour, 2nd edn · D. Turner, etching (after F. Palgrave), BM, NPG · E. Turner, pencil drawing, V&A · oils, St John's College, Oxford
Wealth at death £1000—life insurance provided by Lord Spencer: Stoker, ‘Thomas Frognall Dibdin’; O'Dwyer, Thomas Frognall Dibdin
© Oxford University Press 2004–14
John V. Richardson Jr., ‘Dibdin, Thomas Frognall (1776–1847)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7588, accessed 13 June 2014]
Person TypeIndividual
Last Updated8/7/24
active London, Oxford and Edinburgh, about 1666 - 1742
Bristol, 1840 - 1893, Rome
