Author: Dibdin, Thomas Frognall
Biography:
DIBDIN, Thomas Frognall (1776–1847: ODNB)
Baptized in Calcutta on 31 Aug. 1776, Dibdin was the only son of Elizabeth Frognall Compton (d 1781), the second wife of his father, naval captain Thomas Dibdin (d 1780). Supported by his guardian and uncle, William Brompton, from age five to eleven he boarded with a kindly and attentive schoolmaster, John Man (1749-1824) of Hosier’s Lane, Reading, a “purchaser of old books by the sack-full,” in whose library he “caught … the electric spark of the BIBLIOMANIA” (Dibdin, 50). He continued his education at Stockwell, where he was miserable, at a seminary near Isleworth, at St John's College, Oxford (BA 1801, DD 1825), and at Lincoln's and Gray's Inn. Setting aside law for the church, in 1805 he was ordained priest. His nine months’ visit to European libraries in 1818 resulted in A Bibliographical Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour (1821). He first took up clerical duties in Aug. 1823 as vicar of Exning, Suffolk. From Jan. 1824 he was perpetual curate of St. Mary Bryanstone Square, London, and from 1831 one of the king’s, later the queen’s, chaplains in ordinary (a post that twice protected him from arrest for debt). Dibdin was a co-originator of the Roxburghe Club and an influential pioneer of systematic bibliography, the author of several works on cataloguing, book collecting, and typography. Bibliomania (1809) and Library Companion (1824) continue to attract scholarly interest. His 1836 Reminiscences of a Literary Life, flowery and prolix, is, like his other works, a literary iceberg weighed down by interminable if interesting footnotes. On 8 Jul. 1797, he married Sophia (1773-1849), the youngest daughter of the Rev. Francis Humphreys (d 1792) and his wife Frances (d 1799). Together they had four children, Francis (1799-1827), Sophia (1798-1876), Thomas (1801-1810), and Elizabeth (1802-1873). He died 18 Nov. 1847 at 3 Park Road, St John’s Wood. His uncle Charles Compton (1745-1814) was a notable actor, singer, song writer, and musician. (BL India Office MSS: N/1/2 f. 129, N/1/2 f.136; CCEd 23 Mar. 2023; ODNB 10 Mar. 2023; GM 118 [1815], 530; GM 141 [1827], 286; GM 29 [1848], 91-2; GM 32 [1849], 326; T. F. Dibdin, Reminiscences, 2 vols. [1836]; J. G. Nichols, The Topographer and Genealogist, 2 vols. [1853], 1:387; I. Ferris, Book-Men, Book Clubs, and the Romantic Literary Sphere [2015]; S. Husbands, The Early Roxburghe Club 1812-1835 [2019]; M. E. Robinson, The Queer Bookishness of Romanticism [2021]; RLF file 1191) JC
Other Names:
- T. F. D.
- T. F. Dibdin