author
C. M. (Clement Mansfield) Ingleby
1823–1886
A tireless Victorian Shakespeare scholar, he helped untangle famous literary forgeries and wrote widely on the plays, their language, and their history. His career moved from law into letters, but his real lasting reputation came from his sharp-eyed work on Shakespeare.
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About the author
Born at Edgbaston near Birmingham in 1823, Clement Mansfield Ingleby was educated privately and went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his BA in 1847 and later received an MA and an LL.D. He first followed his father into the legal profession, eventually becoming a partner in the family firm, before leaving law in 1859 to devote himself more fully to writing and scholarship.
He is chiefly remembered as a Shakespearean scholar. Reference works and biographical notices describe him as a critic and miscellaneous writer whose best-known books examined Shakespeare’s text, reputation, and the long trail of claims and counterclaims that surrounded it. He became especially noted for work exposing forged Shakespeare documents and for studies including The Shakespeare Fabrications and later volumes on Shakespeare’s life and works.
Ingleby’s interests were broader than literary criticism alone. Contemporary and later accounts note his writing on philosophy and logic, and also remember him as a musician and chess enthusiast. He died in 1886, leaving behind a body of work that reflects both Victorian curiosity and a determined love of careful reading.