William Rufus Chetwood

William Rufus Chetwood (died 1766) was an English or Anglo-Irish publisher and bookseller, and a prolific writer of plays and adventure novels.

[2] Early plays written by Chetwood – South-Sea, or, The Biter Bit and The Stock-Jobbers, or, The Humours of Exchange Alley – were published but remained unperformed.

His second marriage, on 15 June 1738 at St Benet's, Paul's Wharf, London, was to the actress Anne Brett (1720 – c. 1760), a granddaughter of Colley Cibber.

This second marriage may have contributed to severe financial difficulties by 1741, when a benefit performance of William Congreve's The Old Bachelor was given for him at Covent Garden.

At the end of the decade there appeared his General History of the Stage (1749), which includes valuable accounts of the contemporary London and Dublin theatre.