# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Wright, Thomas (antiquarian)

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​WRIGHT, THOMAS (1810–1877), English antiquary, was born near Ludlow, in Shropshire, on the 21st of April 1810. He was descended from a Quaker family formerly living at Bradford, Yorkshire. He was educated at the old grammar school, Ludlow, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1834. While at Cambridge he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine and other periodicals, and in 1835 he came to London to devote himself to a literary career. His first separate work was Early English Poetry in Black Letter, with Prefaces and Notes (1836, 4 vols. 12mo), which was followed during the next forty years by a very extensive series of publications, many of lasting value. He helped to found the British Archaeological Association and the Percy, Camden and Shakespeare societies. In 1842 he was elected corresponding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres of Paris, and was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries as well as member of many other learned British and foreign bodies. In 1859 he superintended the excavations of the Roman city of Uriconium, near Shrewsbury, of which he issued a description. He died at Chelsea on the 23rd of December 1877, in his sixty-seventh year. A portrait of him is in the Drawing Room Portrait Gallery for October 1st, 1859. He was a great scholar, but will be chiefly remembered as an industrious antiquary and the editor of many relics of the middle ages.
His chief publications are—Queen Elizabeth and her Times, a Series of Original Letters (1838, 2 vols.); Reliquiae antiquae (1839–1843, again 1845, 2 vols.), edited with Mr J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps; W. Mapes’s Latin Poems (1841, 4to, Camden Society); Political Ballads and Carols, published by the Percy Society (1841); Popular Treatises on Science (1841); History of Ludlow (1841, &c.; again 1852); Collection of Latin Stories (1842, Percy Society); The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman (1842, 2 vols.; 2nd ed., 1855); Biographia literaria, vol. i. Anglo-Saxon Period (1842), vol. ii. Anglo-Norman Period (1846); The Chester Plays (1843–1847, 2 vols., Shakespeare Society); St Patrick’s Purgatory (1844); Anecdota literaria (1844); Archaeological Album (1845,410); Essays connected with England in the Middle Ages (1846, 2 vols.); Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1847–1851, Percy Society), a new text with notes, reprinted in 1 vol. (1853 and 1867); Early Travels in Palestine (1848, Bohn’s Antiq. Lib.); England under the House of Hanover (1848, 2 vols., several editions, reproduced in 1868 as Caricature History of the Georges); Mapes, De nugis curialium (1850, 410, Camden Society); Geoffrey Gaimar's Metrical Chronicle (1850, Caxton Society); Narratives of Sorcery and Magic (1851, 2 vols!); The Celt, the Roman and the Saxon (1852; 4th ed., 1885); History of Fulke Fitz Warine (1855); Jo. de Garlandia, De triumphis ecclesiae (1856, 410, Roxburghe Club); Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English (1857); A Volume of Vocabularies (1857; 2nd ed., by R. P. Wulcker, 1884, 2 vols.); Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Paris, 1858, 2 vols.); Malory’s History of King Arthur (1858, 2 vols., revised 1865); Political Poems and Songs from Edward III. to Richard III. (1859–1861, 2 vols., “Rolls” series); Songs and Ballads of the Reign of Philip and Mary (1860, 4to, Roxburghe Club); Essays on Archaeological Subjects (1861, 2 vols.); Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England in the Middle Ages (1862, 410, reproduced in 1871 as The Homes of other Days); Roll of Arms of Edward I. (1864, 4to); Autobiography of Thomas Wright (1736–1797), his grandfather (1864); History of Caricature (1865, 4to); Womankind in Western Europe (1869, 4to); Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of 12th Century (1872, 2 vols., “Rolls” series).