William Oxberry

After a false start as a pupil of George Stubbs at age 14, he worked in a bookseller's shop, and in the office in Tottenham Court Road of a printer named Seale, an amateur actor.

[4] At the close of the season he was released from his engagement, and went to Glasgow, where he made a success as Sir David Daw in the Wheel of Fortune.

[1] After returning to Glasgow, Oxberry accepted from Raymond an engagement in London at the Lyceum Theatre, then known as the English Opera House, and appeared in a piece by Henry Siddons, called 'The Russian Impostor,' in which he made a success.

[7] He created many original parts in plays, dramatic or musical, by Arnold, Thomas John Dibdin, James Kenney, George Soane, and others.

When Robert William Elliston reduced the salaries at Drury Lane, he refused the offer, and starred at minor theatres (the Surrey, the East London, and Sadler's Wells).

[1] Oxberry was author of:[1] He also edited The New English Drama, consisting of 113 plays, with prefatory remarks, in 22 vols.

1818–24; and wrote The Actress of All Work, played in Bath on 8 May 1819, in which Elizabeth Rebecca Edwin assumed half a dozen different characters.

[1] A portrait of Oxberry by Samuel De Wilde, in the Garrick Club, shows him as Petro in Arnold's Devil's Bridge.

[1] In 1806 Oxberry married, at Southend, a young actress playing minor parts in the Trotter company, Catherine Elizabeth Hewitt.