author
Thomas Baker
d. 1749
An early 18th-century English dramatist, he is best remembered for lively comedies that brought London manners and social quirks to the stage. His best-known play, Tunbridge Walks, helped keep his name alive long after his own era had passed.
1 Audiobook
The Fine Lady's Airs (1709)
by Thomas Baker
About the author
Thomas Baker was an English playwright and attorney active in the early 1700s. He is thought to have been born around 1680, possibly the son of a London attorney, and he wrote for the stage during a busy period in English theatrical life.
His comedies included Tunbridge Walks, The Fine Lady's Airs, Hamlet the Distrest Mother, and The Mock Match. Of these, Tunbridge Walks became the best known, admired for its comic look at fashionable society and for the vivid character sketches that gave his work its energy.
Later accounts say he also spent time outside London as a schoolmaster and vicar before his death in 1749. Details of his life are patchy, but his surviving reputation rests on his place among the lesser-known yet entertaining dramatists of the Restoration and early Georgian stage.