Arthur Murphy's claim to critical notice now rests, as it did with his contemporaries, on his success as a playwright rather than on his biographical writing, journalism, or verse translations. Having been an actor of note, he saw his own plays produced and acted in by David Garrick, and by the end of the eighteenth century he was second only to Richard Brinsley Sheridan in public esteem. Murphy's career in the theater gave him the drive and material to write biographies. In all three of his biographical works a strong theatrical element persists, often to the detriment of the narrative and the handling of fact. These works may be little known today except by reference in other works, yet their value is far from merely academic, if for no other reason than that they vividly transmit the personality of Murphy himself as a late-eighteenth-century figure popular with Charles...