He was apprenticed to his uncle, J. Roper, a silk mercer, but he disliked trade, and at the expiry of his indentures went to London to seek for literary employment.
The journal was distinguished for the vigour of its attacks on its opponents, and Wright's shop was the scene of the attempt of John Wolcot, better known as Peter Pindar, to chastise Gifford with a cudgel for his severe reflections on his character and writings.
[1] Wright's political connections brought him into contact with William Cobbett, then at the height of his earlier fame as a Tory martyr.
Cobbett was originally proprietor, but in 1810 he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for an attack on the government, and during his incarceration a violent dispute arose as to the division of the profits, which was complicated by Wright's raising a claim for remuneration for his other services.
On Cobbett's release from gaol in 1812 a statement appeared in The Times that he had sought to avoid imprisonment two years before by making his submission to government and offering to suppress the Weekly Register.
[1] In 1819, while in America, Cobbett published a savage attack on Wright in the Register, alleging that he had detected him falsifying his accounts and describing graphically "the big round drops of sweat that in a cold winter's day rolled down the caitiff's forehead" when his villainy was discovered.
[2] When Wright's connection with the 'Parliamentary Debates' ceased in 1830, he undertook a Biographical Memoir of William Huskisson,[3] a work of considerable merit.
The ninth and tenth volumes, consisting of a supplementary collection of contemporary anecdotes concerning Johnson under the title Johnsoniana, were edited by Wright.
Wright deciphered and transcribed the manuscript as far as 27 March 1771, and supplemented the text with "illustrations of the parliamentary history of the reign of George III", drawn from unpublished letters, private journals, and memoirs.
In 1839 he published a preliminary volume, containing the "Debate of the House of Commons on the Bill for the Government of Quebec" (London, 8vo), a subject at that time of considerable interest.
[5] A third (British Library Add MS 31126) contains letters in the possession of Cobbett, and a statement of his case against Wright in regard to the Parliamentary History and Debates.