Thomas Noon Talfourd

Thomas Noon Talfourd (1795-1854) was a writer, judge, and politician from Reading, where his grandfather was a dissenting minister. He attended Mill Hill for a time, and began his study for the law in 1813, largely on the advice of Crabb Robinson. In 1822 he married Rachel Rutt, daughter of John Towill Rutt, the Unitarian. Despite practicing law, Talfourd contributed often to the London periodicals, writing on drama and literature as well for the Edinburgh Review, the London Magazine, the New Monthly Magazine, and others.  By the 1830s he was living with his family at 65 Russell Square, not far from Robinson, and his dinners were legendary, with most of London’s literati there, including Mary Russell Mitford and Charles Dickens. He was elected an MP for Reading in 1835 as a Liberal, supporting universal suffrage but was distrustful of Chartism. While an MP, he wrote the poetic tragedy Ion (1836), which reflected his politics and nonconformity in religion. The play enjoyed immense popularity and critical success in America and Europe until well into the Victorian period. His other play, The Athenian Captive (1838), also with Macready in the lead, opened at the Haymarket, an attack on slavery, but with a renewed belief in a virtuous monarchy, reflecting the emergence of Victoria in 1837.  He was also a lecturer, one of which, ‘The Importance of Literature to Men of Business’, delivered to a meeting of the Manchester Athenaeum in October 1845, was published in 1852.