Thomas Frost

Born in Croydon on December 16, 1821, he trained in printing before finding his way into journalism and political writing. He became involved with Chartism and Owenite ideas, and in the 1840s he worked on periodicals including The Communist Chronicle, showing how closely his writing life was tied to the reform movements of his time.

Later, he wrote for newspapers including the Liverpool Albion and then worked in Barnsley as a reporter. Alongside journalism, he produced many books and reportedly described a number of them as practical, money-earning work rather than grand literary projects.

Even so, some of those books lasted. His Lives of the Conjurers (1876) is often noted as an early substantial history of magic, and it helped preserve the stories of performers and entertainers who might otherwise have been forgotten. He died on July 16, 1908.