James Kenney (dramatist)

[1] His first play, a farce called Raising the Wind (1803), gained success through the popularity of the character of "Jeremy Diddler".

Among his other works were False Alarms (1807), a comic opera with music by Braham, Love, Law and Physic (1812), Debtor and Creditor, The Touchstone (1817), A Word to the Ladies (1818), Forget and Forgive (1827), Spring and Autumn (1827), The Illustrious Stranger, or Married and Buried (1827), Masaniello (1829), The Pledge (1831) and The Sicilian Vespers, a tragedy (1840).

Beginning as a clerk in the General Post Office in London, he joined the staff of The Times, as a drama critic.

Having been called to the bar, he became in 1849 secretary to Ferdinand de Lesseps, and in 1857 published The Gates of the East, in support of the proposed construction of the Suez Canal.

Thackeray and Dickens were among his friends in a literary coterie where he gained a reputation as a wit and a writer of society verse.