William Dimond

William Fisher Peach Dimond (11 December 1781 – c1837) was a playwright of the early 19th-century who wrote about thirty works for the theatre, including plays, operas, musical entertainments and melodramas.

[1] He was born in Bath in Somerset in December 1781, the eldest surviving son of William Wyatt Dimond (1750–1812), an actor and theatrical manager, and his wife, Matilda Martha, née Baker (1757–1823).

His work Petrarchal Sonnets, and Miscellaneous Poems was published in 1800 by private subscription and dedicated to the Duchess of York; however, the book was "criticized for its immature extravagances of diction".

The actress Sarah Egerton appeared at Bath in his The Hero of the North (1809), Daniel Terry played Bertrand in The Foundling of the Forest (1809) in Edinburgh, while Catherine Stephens was the original Donna Isidora in Dimond's Brother and Sister (1815).

[5] The British Critic approved of his Adrian and Orilla, or, A Mother's Vengeance but thought the dialogue "generally too florid, bordering frequently upon affectation, and occasionally … not far removed from nonsense".

The talents he received from nature have wanted the cultivation of good taste; and the offences against propriety which wild genius commits, will never be corrected by ill-judging audiences.

[7] William Hazlitt found in Dimond's plays: "... so strong a family likeness that, from having seen any one of them, we may form a tolerable correct idea of the rest … The author does not profess to provide a public entertainment at his own entire expense, and from his own proper funds, but contracts with the manager to get up a striking and impressive exhibition in conjunction with the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, the musical composer, the orchestra, the chorusses on the stage, and the lungs of the actors!