Thomas James Serle (1798-1889)

Media credit University of Leeds

Thomas James Serle was a dramatist, actor and journalist. He was born in London on 28 October 1798. He intended to practice law but began to write plays as a teenager. He started to work as an actor at the age of 18, performing in Shakespearean plays across the country and touring to France and Belgium. He founded the Dramatic Authors Society in the early 1830s and continued to write and perform in London during the this time. He gave lectures on Shakespeare in Manchester, Liverpool and London.

He married Cecilia Novello on 3 September 1836 at St Anne’s Church, Soho, and they had three daughters, two surviving of whom survived: and Emma Clara Serle. Emma was baptised alongside her sister Lydia Mary at the English Protestant Church in Dinan, France, on 1 May 1857. He withdrew from the theatre in the early 1850s. He wrote for the Weekly Dispatch under the name ‘Caustic’ and acted as its editor in the 1870s. He died at Novello Cottage in Worthing on 18 March 1889.