author

Thomas Seccombe

1866–1923

A busy literary craftsman of late Victorian and Edwardian England, he helped shape reference writing at a high level while producing biographies, criticism, and literary history of his own. Best known for his work on the Dictionary of National Biography, he brought a clear, informed voice to hundreds of lives and essays.

1 Audiobook

George Borrow

George Borrow

by Thomas Seccombe

About the author

Thomas Seccombe was an English writer, editor, and biographer born in 1866. He was educated at Felsted and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took a first in Modern History in 1889. From 1891 to 1901, he served as assistant editor of the Dictionary of National Biography and is credited with writing more than 700 entries.

His career ranged widely across literary journalism and reference publishing. He wrote criticism, biography, and surveys of English literature, and his books included The Age of Johnson and, with John William Allen, The Age of Shakespeare. He also contributed to major reference works including the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Seccombe is remembered less as a single-book celebrity than as a remarkably industrious man of letters. His work helped document English literary and historical figures for a broad reading public, and it still gives a good sense of the learned, accessible style valued in his time.