Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin  

brother of Thomas John Dibdin
Born 1767   died 1833

Charles Isaac Mungo Dibdin  was a son of Charles Dibdin and the elder brother of Thomas John. He, like his brother, was sent off to Cecil Pitt by his mother when she and Charles Dibdin broke up and Mungo was latter apprenticed to an pawnbroker.

This was to avoid his becoming involved with the stage and world of acting.

Despite this, his career seems to be seems to be similar to that of his brother Thomas involving acting management and writing.

He, like his brother, travelled to Liverpool and Dublin performing although it is likely that he was based in London, the centre of the theatre world. 

In 1816 he worked with his brother on the development of the Surrey Theatre, which was originally the Royal Circus started by his father but this ended in financial disaster. In 1819 he was declared bankrupt and ended up in debtor’s prison for two years.

He was release from prison when he sold his shares in the Sadler’s Wells Theatre which he had managed in 1809 and later went on to manage the Surrey Theatre again.

 For Mungo, 4 years older than his brother Thomas John, his life and career can be seen as running in parallel to his brother. How much they saw each other is at the moment anyone’s guess but from time to time they worked together and went through similar crises and had similar life styles from an early age.

Thomas Frognall Dibdin

Son of Thomas Dibdin the Sea Captain

nephew of Charles Dibdin

(born 1776, Calcutta [now Kolkata], India—died November 18, 1847, London

Thomas Frognal was the son of Thomas Dibdin, the sea captain brother of Charles Dibdin, who died in South Africa and is  commemorated in the song Tom Bowling.

His mother died soon after his father, so T.F.Dibdin was orphaned at the age of 4 and brought up by an Uncle.

He became well educated, trained in law and then entered the church, however he spent his early years writing and living with considerable involvement in the literary world, being a founder member of the Roxburghe Club.

He was born a year before Agostino Aglio and a few years after his cousin Thomas John Dibdin and no doubt lived in London amidst the literary elite of the day.

“Perhaps his most famous book is Bibliomania, or, Book-madness, containing some account of the history, symptoms and cure of this fatal disease (1809) This seems to cause quite a stir.”

“In all Dibdin wrote more than forty-six different works including sermons and lectures under at least four different pseudonyms, two of which were Cato Parvus and Mercurius Rusticus.”

By the age of about 50 he chose to give up “bibliography” although and devote his time to clerical duties although he did publish some further works.

Comment by Mercurious Rustus in response to Thomas Frognall Dibdin in his article Bibliomania. 

“In regard to the patronage of literature, what can exceed Lord Kingborough’s patronage of the Antiquities of Mexico, a work put forward by Augustine Aglio ?”

This little excerpt is interesting on two counts

It indicates an acknowledgement by a member of the Dibdin family of the work done by a member of the Aglio family
The article written by Thomas Frognall Dibdin is answered by Thomas Frognall Dibdinunder two of his aliases.