He was apprenticed to a staymaker, and in 1760, went to London where he worked at his trade for some time, fairly unsuccessfully, and then became an attorney's clerk.
His first play, the comedy False Delicacy, written in prose, was produced by Garrick at Drury Lane on 23 January 1768, with the intention of rivalling Oliver Goldsmith's The Good-Natur'd Man which it successfully did.
[1] The production of his second comedy, A Word to the Wise (Drury Lane, 3 March 1770), occasioned a riot in the theatre, repeated at the second performance, and the piece had to be abandoned.
[1] There was still ill-feeling regarding Kelly's defence of the government using force against Wilkes' followers during a recent clash at St George's Field.
His other plays are: Clementina (Covent Garden, 23 February 1771), a blank verse tragedy, given out to be the work of a young American clergyman in order to escape the opposition of the Wilkites; The School for Wives (Drury Lane, 11 December 1773), a prose comedy given out as the work of Major (afterwards Sir William) Addington; a two-act piece, The Romance of an Hour (Covent Garden, 2 December 1774), borrowed from Marmontel's tale L'amitié à l'épreuve; and an unsuccessful comedy, The Man of Reason (Covent Garden, 9 February 1776).
Pamphlets in reply to Thespis are: Anti-Thespis (1767); The Kellyad... (1767), by Louis Stamma; and The Rescue or Thespian Scourge... (1767), by John Brown-Smith.