This volume examines Charles Dibdin's extraordinarily wide-ranging career as an actor, lyricist, composer, singer-songwriter, comedian, theatre-manager, journalist, artist, music tutor, speculator, and author, and offers fresh insights into late Georgian culture, society, and politics.

Charles Dibdin made his London debut in 1760 and retired in 1811; indefatigable, he flourished as performer, author-composer, and impresario. Early in his career, he worked in every important theatre and with most of the major theatrical figures of his time - contributing to the light entertainment that late 18th-century theatre-goers increasingly demanded; later, he worked in the proliferating minor theatres which steadily challenged the monopoly of the legitimate houses. Ironically, the theatrical establishment succumbed not long after his death; the prolific Dibdin, with his popular but undemanding forms of entertainment, was riding the wave of the future.