author
Matthew Feilde
A little-known 18th-century writer whose surviving work points to London’s theatrical world. He is chiefly remembered for a pastoral stage piece performed at Covent Garden in 1782.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Matthew Feilde appears to be an obscure British author now known mainly through a small surviving body of catalogued work. Library and bibliographic records connect him with Songs, duets, &c. in Vertumnus and Pomona, a dramatic pastoral, in two acts, which was performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and printed in London in 1782.
Because reliable biographical sources on Feilde are scarce, very little about his life can be confirmed from the material available online. What can be said with confidence is that his name remains attached to the literary and musical culture of late-18th-century London, and that his work has been preserved through major catalogues and digitization projects including Project Gutenberg and the Grub Street Project.
That makes Feilde one of those authors who survive more through the record of performance and publication than through a documented personal history. For modern listeners and readers, his appeal lies in that glimpse of the lively theatrical world around Covent Garden in the 1780s.