Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright was born on 17 November 1862 in Middleton Tyas, Yorkshire, into a family of mixed Anglo-Irish and Swedish descent.

His father was ordained deacon in 1859; later in life he officiated in Belfast, Dublin and Liverpool and managed the Protestant Reformation Society.

Wright was privately educated in Russia, France and Germany, and attended the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and Trinity College in Dublin.

Its present-day eclectic facade, Main Hall and Reading Room date back to Wright's time; the library as a whole has been substantially expanded in 1920s, 1930s and 1990s.

[6] When notable book collections were slated to be auctioned to foreign buyers, as was the case of Sir Henry Clinton's library, Hagberg publicly rallied to keep them in the country.

His catalogues earned reputation for scrupulous research and attribution of anonymous and pseudonymous publications, and became a standard reference source for British and overseas librarians.

[17] Later, Wright provided legal support to Tolstoy's secretary Vladimir Chertkov and his family after their emigration to England.

[18] Wright welcomed Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Nabokov, Alexey Tolstoy to London and introduced them to English writers and publishers of his circle.

He was an important figure of the Anglo-Russian Committee, an organization that regularly exposed Russian political troubles to the British public.

In 1908 Wright, Henry Nevinson, and Peter Kropotkin campaigned to raise money for the escape of Russian revolutionary Maria Spiridonova, who was serving life sentence for a murder.

[20] During the Russian Civil War Wright joined the British Committee for Aiding Men of Letters and Science in Russia.

[23] At the age of 57, Wright married Constance Metcalfe Tyrrell Lewis (1864–1949), at St Stephen's Church, Gloucester Road, South Kensington, on 20 February 1919.