The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hunchback, by James Sheridan Knowles,
Edited by Henry Morley

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Title: The Hunchback

Author: James Sheridan Knowles

Editor: Henry Morley

Release Date: October 8, 2007 [eBook #3480]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HUNCHBACK***

Transcribed from the 1887 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

THE HUNCHBACK.
THE LOVE-CHASE.

BY
JAMES SHERIDAN KNOWLES

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
_LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
1887.

INTRODUCTION

James Sheridan Knowles was born at Cork in 1784, and died at Torquay in
December, 1862, at the age of 78. His father was a teacher of elocution,
who compiled a dictionary, and who was related to the Sheridans. He
moved to London when his son was eight years old, and there became
acquainted with William Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. The son, after his
school education, obtained a commission in the army, but gave up
everything for the stage, and made his first appearance at the Crow
Street Theatre, in Dublin. He did not become a great actor, and when he
took to writing plays he did not prove himself a great poet, but his
skill in contriving situations through which a good actor can make his
powers tell upon the public, won the heart of the great actor of his day,
and as Macready's own poet he rose to fame.

Before Macready had discovered him, Sheridan Knowles lived partly by
teaching elocution at Belfast and Glasgow, partly by practice of
elocution as an actor. In 1815 he produced at the Belfast Theatre his
first play, _Caius Gracchus_. His next play, _Virginius_ was produced at
Glasgow with great success. Macready, who had, at the age of seventeen,
begun his career as an actor at his father's theatre in Birmingham, had,
on Monday, October 5th, 1819, at the age of twenty-six, taken the
Londoners by storm in the character of Richard III Covent Garden reopened
its closed treasury. It was promptly followed by a suc