William Rufus Chetwood was an English or Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

 publisher and bookseller, and a prolific writer of plays and adventure novels. He also penned a valuable General History of the Stage.

Publishing and prompting

Nothing certain is known of Chetwood's early life, but he may have spent an extended period at sea. In 1713 he appeared as the publisher of A Poem on the Memorable Fall of Chloe's P—s Pot (attributed to Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

). In the following year he was acting as assistant manager to Joseph Ashbury's theatre company in Dublin. His first published writing appears to have been a Life of Lady Jane Grey, published in Dublin in 1715. By June 1715 he was prompter at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...

, which he remained for much of the following twenty years.

Chetwood soon built up a business as a publisher and bookseller, operating either alone or in conjunction with other publishing houses. His repeated partners in publishing included Barnaby Bernard Lintot

Barnaby Bernard Lintot

Barnaby Bernard Lintot , English publisher, was born at Southwater, Sussex, and started business as a publisher in London about 1698...

, John Watts, William Mears, and James Roberts. The joint ventures included several Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 plays, almost every new London play between 1719 and 1722, Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe

Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...

's Moll Flanders

Moll Flanders

The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders is a novel written by Daniel Defoe in 1722, after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer. By 1722, Defoe had become a recognised novelist, with the success of Robinson Crusoe in 1719...

and Colonel Jack, Colley Cibber

Colley Cibber

Colley Cibber was an English actor-manager, playwright and Poet Laureate. His colourful memoir Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber describes his life in a personal, anecdotal and even rambling style...

's collected plays, and many of Eliza Haywood

Eliza Haywood

Eliza Haywood , born Elizabeth Fowler, was an English writer, actress and publisher. Since the 1980s, Eliza Haywood’s literary works have been gaining in recognition and interest...

's novels. Meanwhile he published alone plays by Theophilus Cibber

Theophilus Cibber

Theophilus Cibber was an English actor, playwright, author, and son of the actor-manager Colley Cibber.He began acting at an early age, and followed his father into theatrical management. In 1727, Alexander Pope satirized Theophilus Cibber in his Dunciad as a youth who "thrusts his person full...

, Thomas D'Urfey

Thomas d'Urfey

Thomas D'Urfey was an English writer and wit. He composed plays, songs, and poetry, in addition to writing jokes. He was an important innovator and contributor in the evolution of the Ballad opera....

 and Thomas Doggett

Thomas Doggett

Thomas Doggett was an Irish actor.Doggett was born in Dublin, and made his first stage appearance in London in 1691 as Nincompoop in Thomas D'Urfey's Love for Money. In this part, and as Solon in the same author's Marriage-Hater Matched, he became popular...

, Richard Savage

Richard Savage

Richard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets....

's memoirs of Theophilus Keene, and Haywood's novel Love in Excess.

Plays and novels

Early plays by Chetwood — South-Sea, or, The Biter Bit and The Stock-Jobbers, or, The Humours of Exchange Alley — were published but remained unperformed. Chetwood also published two novels almost certainly by him: The Voyages, Dangerous Adventures, and Imminent Escapes of Captain R. Falconer and the 1726 Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle, which remained in print at least until the mid-19th century. His first work to be performed on stage was The Lovers' Opera (1729), an adaptation of Susanna Centlivre

Susanna Centlivre

Susanna Centlivre born Susanna Freeman, also known professionally as Susanna Carroll, was an English poet, actress and one of the premier dramatists of the 18th century. During her long career at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, she became known as the Second Woman of the English Stage after Aphra Behn...

's A Bold Stroke for a Wife (1718). This went through at least three published editions and was also performed on the Dublin stage in 1736.

Four further stage works followed (The Stage Coach Opera, 1730; The Generous Free Mason, 1730; The Emperor of China, Grand Volgi, 1731, but unpublished; and The Mock Mason, a ballad opera, 1733). However, these seem to have brought him few financial rewards and records of later plays are scanty. A further novel, The Voyages, Travels and Adventures of Captain W. O. G. Vaughan, appeared in 1736.

Marriages and debts

Chetwood had a daughter by an early marriage, Richabella, (fl. 1738–1771), who became an actress and married an Irish actor, Tobias Gemea. His second marriage, on 15 June 1738 at St Benet Paul's Wharf, London, was to the actress Anne Brett (1720-c. 1760), a granddaughter of Colley Cibber. They had two daughters, but both died in early childhood in the 1740s.

This marriage may have contributed to financial difficulties that were severe by 1741, when a benefit performance of William Congreve

William Congreve

William Congreve was an English playwright and poet.-Early life:Congreve was born in Bardsey, West Yorkshire, England . His parents were William Congreve and his wife, Mary ; a sister was buried in London in 1672...

's The Old Bachelor was given for him at Covent Garden

Covent Garden

Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...

. A collection called Five New Novels appeared in the same year. There are mentions of him working in Dublin in 1741 and 1744, and Belfast (with his daughter) in 1753. At the end of the decade there appeared his General History of the Stage (1749), which includes valuable accounts of the contemporary London and Dublin theatre. Other efforts to make a living included A Tour through Ireland (1748) and a poem called Kilkenny, or, The Old Man's Wish (1748). His British Theatre (1750) includes a list of Shakespeare quartos of which several are spurious.

Chetwood died on 3 March 1766, probably in the Marshalsea prison, Dublin.