Thomas Hailes Lacy

Thomas Hailes Lacy (1809 – 1 August 1873) was a British actor, playwright, theatrical manager, bookseller, and theatrical publisher.

Thomas Hailes Lacy

Lacy made his West End stage debut in 1828 but soon turned manager, a position he held from 1841 at The Theatre, Sheffield (destroyed by fire in 1935). The following year, Lacy married actress Frances Dalton Cooper (1819 - 1872) in that city; the couple also toured England together. Lacy's roles included Jacques (As You Like It) and Banquo (Macbeth).

In the mid-1840s Lacy withdrew from the stage and set up a business as a theatrical bookseller in London, at first in Wellington Street, Covent Garden and, from 1857, at 89 Strand. He also ventured into publishing with an innovative approach to playscripts, producing acting editions of recent plays so that each actor could have a full script to work from. Lacy's Acting Edition of Plays, published between 1848 and 1873, eventually ran to 99 volumes containing 1,485 individual pieces.

In 1859 he made the acquaintance of US entrepreneur Samuel French, who had started a similar publishing business in New York City five years earlier and was visiting London. Lacy and French became partners, each acting as the other's agent across the Atlantic. In 1872, French decided to take up permanent residence in London, and when Lacy retired without any immediate heirs in 1873, he sold out to French for five thousand pounds.

Thomas Hailes Lacy died in the same year in Sutton, Surrey.

Works by Lacy
  • The Pickwickians (play, 1837)
  • The Tower of London (play, 1840) (with Thomas Higgie)
  • The School for Daughters (comedy, 1843) (with Dennis Lawler)
  • Martin Chuzzlewit (play, 1844) (with Thomas Higgie)
  • Clarissa Harlowe (tragedy, 1846) (with John Courtney)
  • A Silent Woman (farce, 1851)
  • Belphegor; or, The Mountebank (drama, 1851, from the French (with Thomas Higgie)
  • Jeanette's Wedding Day (farce from Les Noces de Jeanette, 1855).
gollark: "tested" how?
gollark: ?intro Hi, I am gollark/osmarks and I'm interested in the future of note-taking software, and this looks interesting.
gollark: qntm (writer of Ra and Fine Structure which are pretty good too)'s Antimemetics Division is an SCP Foundation thing dealing with "antimemes". The page conveniently describes an antimeme as "an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it". Probably not for you if you don't really like the SCP horror-ish stuff, but good if you're into that.http://www.scp-wiki.net/antimemetics-division-hub
gollark: I imagine lots of people here will have already read (some of) them, but the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett is very good. Fantasy, though, not sci-fi.
gollark: You can't connect through your phone or something? I would never be left without internet connectivity, so I would.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.